178 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 



local or efficient workmen^ — of settling Forest Colonies, We 

 shall learn also what, if any, openings can be found for temporary 

 or casual employment, as to which no forester is sanguine. The 

 fact is that as silviculture extends it creates a sphere for local 

 skilled employment, which remains practically closed to the 

 urban unemployed. Silviculture will keep people on the land — 

 it will not provide for surplus urban unskilled casual labour in 

 times of emergency. It is one of the most highly skilled 

 amongst rural industries. Every detail from the nursery to 

 the saw bench requires skill, while the actual planting should 

 only be undertaken by experienced hands. Any of these 

 operations if bungled may mean all the difference between profit 

 or loss on the crop, and, indeed, the want of skill in our profes- 

 sional foresters accounts in some measure for the economic failure 

 of their industry. Ignorance and game are the ruin of British 

 woodlands. Abroad the damage done by deer in Germany 

 and by hares in France is often serious, but is mitigated by 

 professional capacity. Surely if the ignorance of the best of 

 us is a stumbling-block, the inevitable consequence of letting 

 loose upon the State Forests the temporary clients of Urban 

 Distress Committees would be to add enormously to the dis- 

 advantages under which Forestry has hitherto laboured. It 

 is a proposal which no forester can understand ; for to combine 

 silviculture with relief works spells certain failure, unless indeed 

 such labour is restricted to piece work on roads in summer, and 

 that is obviously the last operation to be taken in hand. 



The divorce between our urban population and the soil is a 

 national calamity. The cure seems to me to lie in the extension 

 of intensive cultivation round populous centres, adjacent to the 

 urban home, and in surroundings to which people are accustomed. 

 If you rarely attract the townsman to the land, you will as 

 rarely fail to keep the countryman upon it if you give him 

 openings for self and family, and the Nursery work provides 

 splendid training and employment for many boys. One of my 

 gardeners came to Novar entirely because he had a large 

 family of sons, and knew that they would all find employ- 

 ment leading on to skilled occupations. This is just the 

 type of family that usually drifts into the towns. Silviculture 

 gives an even more steady employment than does agriculture, 

 and it is these regular employments which our present 

 day social system lacks. The necessity for fostering them 



