DISCUSSION ON FORESTRY IN SCOTLAND. I 29 



have an area at all unless it fulfils two conditions. First, that it 

 should be so well stocked with wood as to be within the first few 

 years a forest in being, fit to demonstrate every department of 

 forestry — the cutting of crops in regular rotation and their trans- 

 port and utilisation, forest management and book-keeping, and 

 practical forestry in all the various stages. Our desire is to see 

 all these things in a position to be studied in practice at the 

 earliest moment. This means a ready-made forest, and that is 

 what is so difficult to get. That was one of our conditions. 

 The other was that the Government should not embark on the 

 expense of such an undertaking unless it could obtain complete 

 control of the area for a long period. We did not lay down 

 purchase as the only possible method, but when we were asked, 

 as we have been asked very often, whether a lease would do, we 

 have always said in that case it must be a very long lease, 

 because the value of the place would be much greater at the 

 end of a hundred years than now, the value consisting largely in 

 its accumulated records. For the first few years, as forestry is 

 in Scotland at present, it would be of great value for the demon- 

 stration of practical work, but when forestry is in better order 

 in Scotland, as we hope it may be in fifty or sixty years, the 

 value of the area will lie mainly in its records, and in what it 

 has been able to do towards building up the science of Scottish 

 forestry. In these circumstances, determined to have something 

 of which we could get continuous management, and determined 

 to have something which would be of value at the outset, we 

 were driven to the selection of this area in Aberdeenshire which 

 is fully stocked with woods on a considerable scale, and of the 

 various age-classes of which a working forest must consist. 

 The trees are almost entirely conifers. Admittedly that is a 

 disadvantage. It would have been better to have had hard- 

 woods also, but beyond any doubt conifers come first in Scotland, 

 and must come first partly because they give an earlier return, 

 and partly because the demand in this country for coniferous 

 wood is far greater than for hardwood. 



" It seems that there would have been less criticism of this 

 proposal if the area selected had not been nearer the one 

 teactiip.g centre than the other two. The fact of Aberdeen 

 being near to Ballugie has been a great drawback with people 

 who feel keenly about the claims of the rival Institutions. Let 

 me say this, that no question of rivalry between the teaching 



