WASTEFUL SUPPLIES 67 



and Scotland must have appeared to be well wooded. 

 England, with her numerous hedgerow trees and 

 clumps and patches of woodland of varying size ; 

 Scotland, with an absence of hedgerow trees, but 

 larger areas of woods, especially conifers. 



As we have seen, there were some three million 

 acres of woods in the country, but they were poor 

 in quality owing to the inferior methods upon 

 which, for the most part, they had been grown. 

 They were very much scattered, often having been 

 planted with no reference to the possibility of 

 being able to extract the material when it had 

 matured owing to the absence of efficient transport 

 lines. This timber, in the majority of cases, had 

 been produced at an extravagant cost ; it had 

 scarcely a market before the outbreak of war. 

 Being restricted to our home supplies we had to 

 make use of the existing material, with the con- 

 sequent lowering of the market quality of the 

 material used and an enhancement of the price 

 due to the shortness of supplies. 



Practically speaking, therefore, through our failure 

 to recognize the importance of forestry in this 

 country in pre-war days, we had to secure our 

 timber requirements during the war at an extrava- 

 gant price, paying high both for the material, for 

 its extraction and conversion, and obtaining in the 

 end a product very inferior to that on the markets 

 before the war. 



Further, we had to cut considerable amounts of 

 material which had not reached maturity, thus 

 suffering a direct loss of valuable capital. 



