146 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
of a future generation. To settle this point, it is not sufficient 
to prove that the trees will grow to any given size, or on any 
particular soil or situation, but it is necessary to demonstrate 
that a minimum quantity of timber can be produced per acre 
in a given time, and at a cost which is so much less than its 
market value that an average net return is left at the end of 
the rotation which exceeds the annual value of the land 
previous to planting. Of course, there are other features 
connected with afforestation which are of equal importance 
to that of its financial success. But we cannot ignore the 
fact that no prudent Government, and certainly no private 
individual, prudent or otherwise, will embark on a scheme of 
any magnitude which is likely to result in a dead loss as an 
investment. Yet, so far as any direct evidence is forth- 
coming, this is just as likely to be the result of afforestation 
as those high returns which optimists have figured out to their 
own satisfaction, if not altogether to the satisfaction of others. 
We are only too ready to admit that instances of undoubted 
authenticity have been given of areas of waste land being 
planted, and yielding crops of timber the value of which has 
exceeded the cost of producing it, and left something substantial 
over. But if any great number of authentic records exist in 
this country of compact plantations of several hundred acres 
in extent having given a net return of any definite sum per acre, 
after allowing compound interest on all items of income and 
expenditure, I should be glad to know where they are. Any 
figures that I have seen or heard of usually miss out items 
which must inevitably have represented expenditure of some 
kind or other, or they refer to plantations of a few acres only, 
which rarely enable any satisfactory conclusions to be arrived 
at. In either case, we fail to get what we urgently require, viz., 
a definite statement which will prove that 5s., 1os., or 15s. per 
acre per annum, as the case may be, has been obtained from 
a number of blocks of tooo acres or so of otherwise waste or 
semi-waste land by the process of afforestation. 
If such a statement can be produced, it would go a long way 
towards establishing such proof as we require to make out a 
conclusive case for afforestation. But if not, then it is no use to 
sit down and do nothing for the next one hundred years or so, 
while investigators are working out their results from plantations 
now in their infancy. It does not require a health specialist 
