74 AFFORESTATION DURING THE WAR 



are raised in, the trees and green tops. In a favour- 

 able year the progeny run into many millions. You 

 will say what matter, if they only confine themselves 

 to useless trees and tops on the ground. But how 

 about the time when there are no more tops, green 

 tops I mean ? The grubs will not live in dead ones, 

 nor will the beetles oviposit there. We shall have 

 reared a mighty host, and this host in self-preserva- 

 tion will attack the areas of woods, coniferous woods, 

 left standing in the country. There can be little 

 doubt that this problem will give trouble. 



Early in the war, when it became obvious that 

 heavy fellings would eventually have to be made 

 in British woods, I made the suggestion publicly 

 that it would be useful if careful records were kept 

 of the amounts of material felled, its nature, locality 

 in which grown, and so forth, since such a record 

 would prove useful in future replanting. The 

 collection of data of this nature was initiated by 

 the Home-Grown Timber Committee and Board of 

 Agriculture, and is still proceeding. The data 

 collected should prove useful in the future, so far 

 as they afford an indication to the correct species 

 to be replanted on the felled-over areas and an 

 insight into the possible best species to plant on 

 neighbouring blank ones. The measurement of 

 the cubic contents, average height, etc., of promising 

 young woods felled over for pit props will prove 

 most valuable as an aid towards the future prepara- 

 tion of yield tables for these species. The measure- 

 ment of the volumes of the older crops is also, it is 

 believed, going to afford valuable data in some 



