164 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETy. 



markets distant, a dilemma confronts this individual, from 

 which I can see no escape. If his holding is small, his life will 

 be a very poor one unless he and his sons have some steady 

 employment on which they can fall back. If you increase his 

 holding to the size of a small farm and make him self- 

 supporting, then in the nature of things there can be very few 

 such holdings. Mark, please, that the afforested glens will have 

 a much larger population than those devoted to grazing, even 

 when these are divided among the largest possible number of 

 smallholders. A sheep farm so divided can never support 

 more than a few families, even if they devote their whole time 

 to digging the arable ground and keep on the hills the heaviest 

 stock of sheep and cattle which these can carry. Such division 

 is not new. The system can be seen at work on the club farms 

 which are found in some parts of Scotland ; in one such case, 

 which is fairly typical, 6,000 acres are divided into 23 hold- 

 ings. But at best, this line of development has only a solitary 

 and limited existence to offer. It affords no base for any kind 

 of industrial development, nor does it invite easy communication 

 with the outside world. 



It is dangerous to generalise where the conditions are so 

 variable, but it may be reckoned that 1000 acres, which would 

 sustain only one or two families as part of a large sheep farm, 

 might, if divided, sustain four or even five smaller tenants. 

 The same area, if the arable land were devoted to small holdings 

 of about 10 to 15 acres — not enough to support a family by 

 themselves, but backed up with the certainty of healthy and 

 well-paid employment in the woods in place of the precarious 

 profits derived from a common grazing — would support a much 

 larger and more prosperous population. The woods, as I have 

 said, could not get on without a man to every 100 acres. That 

 means double as many families as the divided sheep farm. 

 Occasional labour and forest industries would employ at least 

 as many as the regular work of the forest itself. This is a 

 modest estimate compared with the figures which come to us 

 from foreign countries, but it means that the woods would 

 enable the population to be increased to four times what would 

 be possible under a system of divided grazings, or about fifteen 

 times the population of the same area used as an ordinary sheep 

 farm. If you a.sk why a forest will support so many more 

 people than the same area under grass, I can only reply because 



