278 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
If a great national scheme of planting were to be adopted, 
the planting of 3} million acres of waste land (see above, under 
1) would probably cost about £6 an acre, exclusive of the cost 
of acquiring the land and maintaining the woods and plantations. 
This would mean a total actual outlay of about £ 20,000,000 
(leaving compound interest out of consideration here), which 
could be spread over the next twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty 
years, 
Considering the long period of time elapsing between the 
sowing and the reaping of timber-crops, and also the destructive 
gales that occur every few years, there must always be an 
element of uncertainty as to the future profit from planting, 
though actual experience has shown that land unprofitable for 
arable cultivation or pasture has often yielded good returns 
under timber. On the other hand, it is a well-known fact that 
the world’s demands for timber are growing annually, while 
the area of possible production is diminishing yearly, and there 
is therefore a self-evident probability that timber may have a 
greatly increased value; but beyond this it is not very safe to 
go, and it is impossible to make trustworthy actuarial calculations 
either about thinnings or mature timber. In many of the least- 
populated parts of the United Kingdom, distant from seaports 
and railway-lines, there is so little demand for such timber as 
there is that mature crops are at present unsaleable,! and it 
would necessarily be a somewhat risky step to take if large 
plantations were made simply in the hope that conditions would 
improve by the time the timber-crops were mature. Near coal- 
mines there is always a demand for pit-wood; but, apart from 
1 Although our building and mining operations, railways, and many other 
industries require vast quantities of timber annually, yet there are many parts 
of the United Kingdom (more particularly in Ireland, the least industrial part 
of the kingdom) where there are practically no local industries requiring wood 
as their raw material. For example, most of the larch produced in the 
south-east of Ireland is shipped to Liverpool or Cardiff for pit-wood, and as 
its value is regulated solely by the price obtainable at these ports in competition 
with foreign imports, it often happens that the landowner only gets about 6d. 
a cubic foot for larch that could easily be disposed of at Is. a cubic foot (and 
often more) in many parts of England and Scotland. For Scots pine and 
spruce grown along with the larch in Ireland there is often practically no 
market at all, not even as fuel; and the same may be said about small 
thinnings below pit-wood size. Without local industries consuming wood, 
the value of timber zz sz¢z therefore usually declines proportionately with the 
distance and the cost of transport from some assured market. 
