THE PLANTING OF WASTE LAND FOR PROFIT. 263 
economy labours, and which often make all the difference 
between a profit and a loss with so bulky and heavy a crop as 
timber. 
Without either direct State-assistance or, at any rate, sub- 
stantial encouragement from the State, however, it is hardly 
possible that private landowners, as a body, will ever be in a 
proper position for either planting extensively, or for managing 
extensive plantations on purely business principles in the 
manner most conducive to the ultimate national-economic 
welfare of the country with regard to future supplies of home- 
grown timber. And certainly, if there be any national duty to 
perform in this respect, it is the duty of the State, and not of 
the private landowners. The State is the only landowner that 
never dies, nor is called upon to pay estate and succession 
duty, and it is the only landowner that can make large 
investments without being compelled to desire quick returns 
in the shape.of income; hence the State is the only landowner 
that can be sure of remaining free from the temptation to thin 
timber-crops at an early age and to a great extent—or, in short, 
that can afford to grow the best classes of timber upon rational 
principles. Hence, too, the State is the only possible landowner 
that can be reasonably expected to create large compact blocks 
of woodlands to be formed and managed on business principles, 
with the twofold object of providing timber in the future, and of 
fostering and encouraging rural and wood-consuming industries. 
3. Can we learn anything of practical use to us from what has 
been done in foreign countries about Planting Waste Lands for 
Profit?—We may with advantage consider briefly what has 
been and is being done in Italy, France, Prussia, and Denmark, 
but it is especially the operations in the last-named two countries 
that will be of most practical use to us, as the climatic conditions 
there approximate much more closely to our own than do those 
of the S.W. and S. of Europe. 
(Here follow some statistical details similar to those given in the ‘‘ Notes on 
Continental Forestry, 1904,” on pp. 161-182 of our Transactions for 1905, 
which need not be reproduced. ] 
Though necessarily brief, the above notes may suffice to 
indicate that the action of foreign countries seems worthy of 
imitation by our own Government, even although this has never 
been run on such paternal lines as obtain on the Continent. 
The first and the easiest step that might well be taken in this 
