THE NEGLECT OF HOME TIMBER. I05 



yield a profit of los. an acre on land which if sold in the market 

 as moorland would not fetch more than jQi per acre. 



Thirty-seven years ago the Society instituted a series of 

 annual excursions in the course of which they have visited the 

 Hartz, Bavaria, Switzerland, France and Sweden, practically 

 every country where trees are systematically cultivated. Interest- 

 ing reports of these foreign visits have been published and an 

 enormous amount of useful information tabulated. The Society's 

 motto is a good one : " Ye may be aye sticking in a tree ; it 

 will be growing when ye're sleeping." 



What, however, is the result of the Society's efforts to date ? 

 (i) That the landlords complain that they cannot get an adequate 

 price for their timber when they want to sell it, and that they 

 can often hardly get any one to take it for the lifting. (2) That 

 when the architect who believes in local colour, the home 

 product, the stufT with the tang of the soil about it, wants 

 seasoned home timber he cannot get it. And (3) that the 

 home timber merchants complain that it does not pay them to 

 lay down and season a stock of home timber because there is 

 a prejudice against it and no continuous demand for it. 



That there has in the past existed a prejudice against the 

 use of home timber for building purposes generally and also 

 for cabinet work is undeniable, but is not this typical of the 

 attitude of this country about many things? The foreign 

 article is accepted without question as the best; so long as 

 we get what we want and can afford to pay for it we don't 

 trouble to ask where it comes from or into whose pocket the 

 money goes ; the result, as regards the timber trade, being that 

 we have been pouring ^40,000,000 a year into the pockets of 

 the foreigner, when a considerable proportion of this money 

 could have been retained in this country, and a large number 

 of people might have been kept on the land usefully and happily 

 occupied and rearing healthy children. 



There are several millions of acres of waste land, much of 

 which is suitable for planting. The only effort towards State 

 afforestation that has yet been made, was the purchase in 1907 

 by the Commissioners of Woods of the Inverliever estate on 

 Lochawe-side, of an area of over 12,000 acres, where experimental 

 planting has been going on at the rate of, on an average, 

 160 acres per annum. The estate has unfortunately no direct 

 access to the sea, and every practical man knows how essential 



