A NATIONAL ASSET 113 



of obtaining employment. They do not do so at 

 present. If they are utilised for sporting purposes, 

 a few days' or weeks' employment in the year may 

 have been procurable, but that was all. 



Something more permanent has been required to 

 retain on a country-side of this nature the sons and 

 daughters to whom it has spelt all the home they 

 have known. It has been their home, and has 

 possessed all that indescribable fascination and 

 attraction which the word has always possessed for 

 the human race. But it has not proved a home in 

 the neighbourhood of which they have been able 

 to find work and consequently remain. And yet, 

 had the nation managed things differently in the 

 past, these children, those of them not afflicted or 

 blessed with the British spirit of roving, might have 

 spent their lives in their home surroundings : for 

 it is just this class of land which this question of 

 afforestation in the country is intended to deal with. 

 It is the conversion of these lands, by growing 

 commercial crops of trees upon them, into a national 

 asset of the first importance that the afforestation 

 schemes are advocating. 



There is no interference with agriculture here. 

 Rather the reverse. In course of time the afforesta- 

 tion of such portions of these derelict areas as are 

 capable of such treatment at present will result in 

 the extension of agriculture on areas in which it 

 would have at present no chance of success. In 

 such areas at the present day it is often possible 

 to come across the ancient marks of furrows. No 

 plough put in nowadays would result in any crop 



