122 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



people's minds entirely of the idea that land which is being now 

 profitably employed is to be taken from the present occupiers 

 and used for the purposes of forestry. Nothing is further, I am 

 sure, from the idea of those who are guiding the destinies of 

 forestry in this country, and nothing is further from the views of 

 those who understand the subject. In the first place, let us take 

 the subject of agricultural land. There is no intention, and I 

 think it would be extremely unwise, from every point of view, to 

 take land which can be profitably employed in agriculture and 

 use it for the purposes of forestry. You do not get as large a 

 return from your land, and you do not get as much labour 

 employed upon your land, and these are the two points — the two 

 cardinal points — which must be kept firmly in view in the 

 discussion of this subject. But there is a great deal of land in 

 this country, some of it cultivated, some of it grazed, some of it 

 used for sport, some of it not used at all, which could very 

 profitably be employed, I maintain, for the purposes of silvi- 

 culture, and it is to that land, and to that land alone, that we 

 must look for the enlargement of our forests. 



" I will take the various classes which I have mentioned in order, 

 beginning with land which is at present under tillage, but not 

 under profitable tillage. I am sure every one in this room knows 

 the class of land to which I am referring. Part of it was taken in 

 when agriculture, for one reason or another, was in a more 

 profitable state than it is at present, and when larger returns 

 were got from the growing of crops. Some of that land at any- 

 rate cannot be profitably cultivated now, and there are consider- 

 able areas of it. But it is not all of the same class. I think I 

 am right in saying that a good deal of it, if you take it in large 

 stretches, consists of portions of bad land and portions of good 

 land. Now it is one of the great points with regard to this 

 question of forestry that not only can you take the bad land — I 

 mean bad agriculturally — and use it for forestry to better 

 advantage than it is at present used for tillage, but you are not 

 obliged to plant up the small pockets of good land which occur 

 at varying distances through this bad land. Those can be 

 cultivated, and when properly sheltered by trees they can be 

 cultivated to considerably greater advantage than at present. 

 At present the question of shelter, the question of separat- 

 ing good land from bad, especially on the higher lands — 

 because most of the land I am speaking of is at higher 



