AFFORESTATION 139 



dency on foreign supplies of timber, reduce 

 unemployment, or establish a rural population ; 

 and seems to be based upon the assumption 

 that the officials of the Board of Agriculture and 

 Fisheries are better qualified than English owners 

 and land agents to plant and manage woods. 



Some recent attempts to form plantations on 

 Crown land are sufficient proofs that it is not 

 under all circumstances an easy thing to make 

 woods grow, and even if under this scheme 

 very fine woods were produced, they could give 

 no useful lesson. It is one thing to manage 

 woods so as to produce fine timber and quite 

 a different thing to combine with fine timber 

 a fair return on the expenditure. 



An official who can rely on the unlimited 

 resources of the State, and whose salary is inde- 

 pendent of markets or seasons, must have a 

 very sympathetic mind if he can really under- 

 stand and relieve the difficulties of those who 

 manage their own woodlands in face of in- 

 creasing taxation and a precarious bank balance. 



It is possible to produce fine woods by a 

 management which is regardless of cost, so that 

 the woods would be perfect models of the way 

 in which English woods should not be managed 

 if the realisation of a profit is essential. 



