THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON AFFORESTATION. 183 



the members (on subscribing to tine conditions of not exploiting 

 without permission the areas entered by them in the records 

 of the association, for pastures, leaf-manure or wood) receive 

 free advice, free supervision, free seed, free plants, cultural 

 instruments and technical instruction, and, in the case of poor 

 communities, financial help. 



In Prussia the afforestation with conifers of heaths, abandoned 

 fields, and other waste lands, was started on a large scale without 

 the necessary experience, for the few records which existed 

 of similar works carried out after the thirty-years'-war were 

 brought to light only after the mischief had been done. No 

 German forester dreamt of the dangers which thereafter 

 threatened their cultures, and afforestation works were started 

 all over the country with a light heart and in full expectation 

 of the best results, — expectations, which in most instances, 

 however, were not realised. 



We in these Islands are in a much more favourable position 

 than they were in Prussia sixty years ago, for, in the first 

 instance, we can profit by the experience gained abroad at 

 great cost during more than half a century, without paying for 

 it, beyond the expense of studying reasons and results on the 

 spot. We now know from experience, gathered both here and 

 on the Continent, that (r) the method of cultivation adopted 

 exercises a lasting influence on the growth and future of the forest ; 

 that (2) coniferous forests owing their origin to any description of 

 notch planting, exist always at a considerable disadvantage ; 

 and that (3) even where, under specially favourable conditions, 

 they may have produced profitable crops, they have but a 

 fraction of the power of resisting storms possessed by more 

 rationally grown ones. We have much less to fear from drought 

 in our afforestation of waste lands than on the Continent, and 

 the initial failures in cultural operations should be much less. 

 Altogether the conditions for arborivegetation are, generally 

 speaking, superior in the British Islands to those of Germany, 

 and if we, nevertheless, produce inferior coniferous or other 

 timber, this is not due to the action of nature but solely to 

 the acts of man. 



All the same, the Royal Commissioners made, as Dr Nisbet 

 points out, a great mistake in not ascertaining the silvicultural 

 and financial facts and data regarding the extensive afforesta- 

 tion of waste lands in Prussia, and especially the position that 



