NATIONAL AFFORESTATION 



tended the felling of French woods for the 

 British Army, so as to set shipping free for 

 other requirements. The authority has power 

 to obtain seed, raise nursery stocks, train 

 foresters, make surveys, and initiate schemes 

 of replanting and afforestation. A sum of 

 100,000 has been provided for these purposes. 



Private individuals and public bodies have, 

 so far as possible, assisted by the planting of 

 estate lands and catchment areas, but this is 

 about the sum total of our contribution to one 

 of the most pressing and important of our 

 national problems. It has been left to the 

 war to bring home to the Government the 

 pressing need of afforestation and the neces- 

 sity for large and assured timber resources 

 within its own boundaries. 



Unlike agriculture, long periods have to 

 elapse before the forestry harvest can be 

 reaped. It will be obvious, therefore, that 

 extensive tree-planting is quite beyond the 

 power of the private individual unassisted. 

 It is a State business, in which regularity of 

 action and large wooded areas are first 



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