ashamed of what had been done if they had been responsible 

 for the condition of the State forests, as these were seen a few 

 years ago. Private owners in Scotland bad experimented in 

 testing the various kinds of plantation. In this the State would 

 find guidance, and by attending to these object lessons it could 

 only hope to make its own undertaking a success. Therefore, 

 the State might be fairly called upon, and would do well in its 

 own interest to encourage the work of the owners of private 

 woodlands, so that while it was getting its own machinery into 

 order, it would better understand, from an examination of that 

 work, what was required of it in the large operations which lay 

 in the future. He believed that it was in new areas that the State 

 would find its chief sphere of action, and in order to ascertain 

 what lay before it, it would have to survey all land in Scotland 

 suited to silviculture, and to draft some forest plan. The State 

 could provide the continuous good management which was 

 necessary for working large areas upon fixed lines, whilst the 

 private owner would be more fertile in individual expedients. 



Dr NiSBET said he agreed with everything that had been 

 stated by the Chairman, and with most that Mr Munro Ferguson 

 had said. He did not think that although the money suggested 

 by the Royal Commission was granted they were meantime in a 

 position to utilise it. The system of technical instruction avail- 

 able was not what it ought to be, or what it might have been had 

 the authorities carried out the recommendations of the first 

 Forestry Commission, or even of the 1903 one, of which Mr 

 Munro Ferguson was chairman. They had lost time, and it was 

 important that the deputation should press this matter upon the 

 Secretary of State. Already they had a Forestry school in 

 England, and there was also a very good one in Ireland, but in 

 Scotland they had nothing of the sort. They would never get it 

 unless they kept agitating. Inverliever had been mentioned, but 

 he was not sure that it was suitable for the purpose. Inverliever 

 swarmed with black cock, and the black cock was particularly 

 fond of larch buds and silver fir. Mr MacDonald of Dunach, in 

 November last, shot a black cock returning from the feeding 

 grounds, and while the crop no doubt contained a good many 

 heather tips, it also contained a great number of larch buds and 

 silver fir buds. It was a mistake to assume that all the well- 

 managed forests of Germany and France were State owned. A 

 great many of them — indeed the largest part — were owned by 



