THE PLANTING OF WASTE LAND FOR PROFIT. 275 
or with a mixture of furze and bracken, while the poorer stretches 
of barren mountain-land and the shallow-soiled exposed uplands 
are generally overgrown with heather (ling) chiefly. The growth 
of grass is there never strong enough to interfere with planting. 
In the peat-bogs and their immediate vicinity, bell-heather and 
the common ling usually overgrow the surface-soil, and it is 
only the ‘‘cut-away” parts of such tracts that can be planted at 
present with any fair chance of profit. But these are, at the 
same time, just the parts that can easily be brought under profit- 
able agricultural occupation. 
Wherever large blocks of waste land are to be planted, either 
by the State or by private landowners, the work should not be 
taken in hand until a simple, clear, and definite working-plan for 
drainage, shelter-belts, and planting has been well considered and 
adopted for the next ten, fifteen, or twenty years or more, 
because the most essential conditions for success are (1) careful, 
methodical, economical, and far-seeing management, (2) natural 
or artificial shelter from strong winds, and (3) satisfactory 
natural or artificial drainage. Such a working-plan can be 
modified at any time if circumstances make amendment 
desirable; but there ought from the very beginning to be 
systematic method and regularity. It is not sufficient merely 
to arrange for planting the kinds of trees likely to thrive on 
the given soil and situation; one must also look ahead to the 
time when these plantations will become mature, and must 
consider how the timber can then be cleared without running 
needless risk of damage from wind and from insects. ‘This 
looking far ahead seems usually to have been hitherto quite 
neglected when making large plantations in Great Britain and 
Ireland. 
On open and wind-swept lands, large compact areas will 
seldom be plantable with profit without artificial shelter of some 
sort being provided to a greater or less extent by planting 
shelter-belts in advance; and on extensive stretches of hill-slopes, 
wind-breaks of this sort are an absolute necessity to give young 
plantations any fair chance of thriving. 
When it has been decided to plant any extensive area of 
waste land, its boundaries will have to be fenced and a network 
of main and subsidiary roads projected and marked off in the 
manner most convenient for the future transport of thinnings 
and timber—though there is no necessity for metalling the roads 
