CHAP, i.] Forestry in Britain 3 



2 to 3 %, and for State Forest land it may be put at 2 to 2\ % ; 

 but rates varying from 2,\ to 3J% are laid down in laws 

 referring to expropriation of forest areas, whilst Pressler 1 

 insists that it should be 3 \ % for State Forests, 4 % for large 

 land-owners, and 4 to 5 % for smaller proprietors working on 

 more purely financial principles. Owing, however, to the 

 extrinsic appreciation in the value of broad acres, as conferring 

 a certain degree of social elevation among the moneyed classes 

 in Britain, so low a rate as 2\ % may perhaps be taken for the 

 purpose of determining the actual minimum cost of production 

 of our growing-stock of timber 2 . Taking the annual average 

 rental of the land at about 5^. an acre, and the cost of forming 

 or regenerating the crop at 2 an acre (which was the sum 

 named by Mr. Macgregor in his evidence before the Com- 

 mittee on Forestry on June 28, 1887, as the cost of planting 

 Scots Pine in the Athole forests in Perthshire), the actual 

 cost of production of our woodlands at the present time will 

 therefore be 



(3,005,670 x 2 5^.) I-025 46 = 20,544,571. 

 This does not take into consideration intermediate returns 

 from thinning, &c. ; but, per contra, it omits all annual charges 

 for administration, protection, and rates chargeable. And this 

 is only the actual cost of production, whilst ^^prospective value of 

 the mature crops is in reality a very much greater sum. Thus 

 the forests of Germany aggregate 34,353,743 acres 3 , in regard 

 to which Professor Gayer, in his rectorial address before the 

 University of Munich in 1889, stated 4 that their annual 

 outturn in timber amounted to about 60,000,000 cubic metres 

 worth from 20,000,000 to 22,500,000 sterling, 'so that, 

 reckoning 2 % as the rate of interest yielded, the capital value, of 



1 Rationeller Waldwirth, vol. i. 1858, p. 10. 



2 According to Prof. Endres the present returns from forestry in Germany 

 lie between 2 and 3 %. (Conrad, Elster, Lexis, and Loening's Handworter- 

 buck der Staatsivissenschaften, 1892, vol. iii. p. 602.) 



3 Agricultural Returns for 1892 (Board of Agriculture), p. 167. 



4 Der Wald im Wechselder Zeiten, 1889, p. 15. 



B 2 



