270 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
it would be a szze gud non that such advances would only be 
made on working-plans or schemes for planting and future 
management duly approved by the Forestry branch of the Board 
of Agriculture, etc., and provision would have to be made for 
exercising reasonable supervision to ascertain that the objects of 
the advance were being properly realised ; but these would be 
mere matters of detail in a well-managed department. 
(2) Valuation of Woodlands and ‘Plantations for Estate and 
Succession Duties and for Local Rates—The valuations made 
in respect of woodlands and plantations under the Succession 
Duty Act, 1853, the Finance Act, 1894 (for estate duty), and 
the Rating Act, 1874, are so complex, so illogical, so variable, 
and sometimes so unjust in their incidence as to call urgently 
for simplification and amendment. ‘These provisions in question 
are as follows :— 
Successton Duty Act, 1853, sect. 23.—‘‘ Where timber, trees, or wood, not 
being coppice of underwood, shall be comprised in any succession, the successor 
shall be chargeable with duty upon his interest in the net moneys, after deduct- 
ing all necessary outgoings for the year, which shall from time to time be 
received from any sales of such timber, trees, or wood, and shall account for 
and pay the same ‘yearly; provided that no duty shall be payable on the net 
moneys received from the sale of timber, trees, or wood in any one year unless 
such net moneys shall exceed the sum of ten pounds; provided that if the 
successor shall be desirous of commuting the duty, and shall deliver to the 
Commissioners an estimate of the net moneys obtainable by him from the sale 
of such timber, trees, or wood as may, in a prudent course of management of 
the property, be felled by such successor during his life, the Commissioners, if 
satisfied with such estimate, shall accept the same and assess the duty 
accordingly.” 
To satisfy the above requirements, the custom in England has generally been 
to value all the timber and other wood, and to take 3 per Cent. of this as a fair 
annual return under good management. This income is then treated as an 
annuity, and succession duty has to be paid upon it on a scale laid down in 
tables annexed to the Act. Thus, if the life-tenant were forty years of age on 
entering into succession, and the annual income from the woods were estimated 
at £500 a year, the annuity would be considered as having a capital value of 
£74374 assessable to duty (and not as £500+0'03= £16,666). 
Finance Act, 1894, sect. 7 (§).—‘‘The principal value of any property 
shall be estimated to be the price at which, in the opinion of the Commis- 
sioners, such property would fetch if sold in the open market at the time of 
the death of the deceased... . 
‘‘(8) Subject to the provisions of this Act, the value of any property for the 
purpose of estate duty shall be ascertained by the Commissioners in such 
manner and by such means as they think fit. . . .” 
