. UTILISATION OF OUR PRESENT HOME TIMBER SUPPLIES. 93 



for which it is suited, at home, but it would be good policy to 

 utilise younger material from areas where the increment per 

 acre is much below normal. This state of affairs may arise in 

 many ways, as for instance, where the wrong species had been 

 planted, where plantations have been damaged by snow at a 

 certain age, where damage has been done by squirrels, rabbits, 

 insects, fungoid diseases, etc., etc. So-called shelter-belts, and 

 strips wrongly placed and treated, and not answering the 

 purpose for which they were intended, might in many cases be 

 cleared out (with a view to ultimate consolidation of areas). 

 The first crop of trees, on what has been arable agricultural 

 land, often fails at an early age, and where at all admissible 

 and the crop of an exploitable age, it ought to be cleared off. 



Thinning is more a cultural operation than a source of 

 supply in an emergency, and need not be more than mentioned 

 here. 



All this, in short, implies control, to a certain extent, by the 

 State, but we are getting used to that, and powers under the 

 " Defence of the Realm Act " have probably been taken for more 

 unimportant matters. The patriotism of one, or the keen business 

 instinct of another, ought not to be allowed to run riot with our 

 timber crops, and so undo what has only been attained after 

 much effort. There is no reason why the State should allow 

 indiscriminate clearing of "convenient" areas simply because 

 they are convenient, at this stage of operations at least. 



No time should be lost in setting about the getting up of data 

 relating to the areas already cleared or now being cleared, before 

 it is too late. The Board of Agriculture for Scotland ordered 

 returns of all woodlands, on special forms, some time ago, and 

 these ought surely to be of some use in forming the nucleus of 

 what might prove valuable in after years, for, after all, we some- 

 times learn more from our failures than our successes. 



Without recapitulation, if there is any point in what has been 

 said, it is surely the duty of this Society to urge that immediate 

 steps be taken to ascertain how far our home timber can be 

 made use of at the moment, without endangering the future 

 of the nation and of forestry, and signs are not awanting that 

 their welfares will be more bound together in the future than 

 they have been in the past. There is no apparent reason for 

 losing our heads, or sacrificing in a moment what it has taken 

 forty years of strenuous effort to attain. 



