A CENTURY OF FORESTRY ON THE ESTATE OF LEARNEY. 173 
Forestry transactions do not appear to have been regularly 
recorded and preserved in former years on many estates in this 
part of the country, and the record of such transactions during 
the last hundred years, on an average upland estate may there- 
fore be of some use in the formation of a future working-plan, or 
in deciding as to whether it is more profitable to employ certain 
land for game, sheep, pasture, arable ground, with its attendant 
expensive building and other outlays yielding small returns, or 
to employ it for commercial woodland. 
These problems have been often worked out in various forms, 
and with various results and recommendations; but obviously no 
general rule can apply, and the answer must in each case depend 
on the locality of the area under discussion, and the market- 
prices which can be assumed as reasonably probable for the 
produce. 
In the light of the experience here submitted, the problem 
involving the comparison as a profitable enterprise of the 
employment of land in the north-east part of Scotland, for an 
arable farm, or for afforestation, may be presented in the follow- 
ing form :— 
Let it be supposed that a fifty-acre area of light soil, with no 
special amenities, in north-east of Scotland, and about 800 feet 
above the sea-level, has been converted into an arable farm. 
The outlay required for such conversion would be dwelling- 
house £250, farm offices £500, improvement and fencing of 
fifty acres of ground, together with necessary road and water 
supply, say £750, being a total outlay of £1500. The yearly 
rent of the farm, at only 3 per cent. on the capital outlay, would 
be £45, or eighteen shillings per acre. If one-sixth, which is 
certainly no excessive estimate, be deducted for public burdens 
and management, there remains for the proprietor only a sum of 
fifteen shillings per acre as net annual revenue, representing 24 
per cent. on his capital outlay, without allowing anything for the 
purchase price of the unimproved land. 
Should the tenant, however, under a lease of some years’ 
duration, as is not unfrequently the case, agree to provide free 
of charge the necessary excavations, carriage of material, and 
other assistance, then, of course, the landlord’s capital outlay 
and the tenant’s yearly money rent per acre will proportionately 
diminish, but this does not affect the general argument on the 
subject. 
