NATIONAL AFFORESTATION 



seasoning, preserving, and turning to account 

 the so-called waste products of our woodlands. 

 The diseases of timber, especially with refer- 

 ence to such as is used for mining purposes, 

 deserve serious attention. 



But in connection with the actual forma- 

 tion of plantations and successful timber 

 culture the practical woodman must be em- 

 ployed, for it will be admitted by everyone 

 who is at all interested in our home supplies 

 of timber that the largest areas of the finest 

 coniferous woods in the Kingdom are in the 

 North of Scotland, and from which vast 

 quantities of railway sleepers, poles of every 

 description, and boarding for trenches at the 

 front, have been obtained. What the War 

 Office would have done without the supplies 

 is difficult to say. Now, these very woods were 

 planted, not by a pupil from a school of 

 forestry, but a practical woodman, who had 

 spent his early life in the woodlands of one 

 of the Scottish estates where tree-planting, 

 felling, and converting the timber, w^ere 

 systematically carried out. The premier 



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