FORESTRY IN THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF SCOTLAND. 1 69 



subject can be planted, I am convinced that the State would do 

 best to purchase the estate out and out wherever it can do so, 

 and create its own forest on its own ground. Continuous good 

 management on a fixed plan is the alpha and omega of 

 forestry, and the experience of other countries certainly tends 

 to show that the State can provide this first essential better than 

 any private proprietor. Of course, the State will only buy 

 where it can buy at a reasonable price ; but suitable estates are, 

 as a matter of fact, continually changing hands at prices which 

 will give a good profit to any purchaser who can afford to plant 

 them and wait 80 years for a return on his money. This is a 

 field of investment in which the State has no reason to fear 

 competition. Now, a word as to the speed at which this change 

 should be made. I am very impatient to make a beginning, 

 but I am not at all impatient to see all the waste ground of 

 Scotland planted up, nor do I want to see planting ventures 

 scattered about promiscuously all over the country. I want to 

 see a few carefully planned schemes started in carefully selected 

 localities on a scale large enough to show the full advantages 

 of forestry as the backbone of rural life in a hill country. 



Its value in that respect is admitted in every country round 

 us — in France and Germany and Belgium and Sweden, — but 

 I admit it has still to be proved for Scotland. Let us, therefore, 

 take two glens, such as we have in plenty on the west coast, 

 containing nothing but a sheep farm or a shooting lodge and 

 a few shepherds' or stalkers' houses. Let us plant one glen. 

 Let us leave the other alone or develop it in any way you 

 like without the aid of forestry. Then at the end of 50 or 

 80 years let our children compare them and see which glen 

 is the happier, the more populous, and the more prosperous. 

 I have no doubt myself about the result. I am also convinced 

 that the change will be so rapid and so marked, when you 

 import this great industry into a district which now has nothing 

 to depend upon but wool and mutton, that long before 50 years 

 are up you will find districts all over the Highlands petitioning 

 to be afforested. This dream will not be realised in a moment. 

 The new order cannot be in full swing for some 80 years, but 

 this gradual extension is surely an advantage. You cannot 

 plant people as you plant trees, and, after all, the progress is 

 not so very slow. In the first or planting stage you will at 

 least double the present population. In the next, when the 



VOL. XXVII. PART II. M 



