NATIONAL ASPECTS OF FORESTRY 17 



If the matter be carefully examined it will be found 

 that timber is a commodity which, until the last fifty 

 years or so, has been produced by all European countries 

 in sufficient quantities to meet domestic requirements. 

 By ' domestic ' is meant such uses as the erection of houses, 

 public buildings, fuel, household goods, implements, and 

 various minor purposes to which wood is put. In recent 

 years,mining, manufacturing, and industrial countries, with 

 a small area under forest, or an abnormal population, have 

 experienced a deficiency, chiefly due to the requirements 

 of collieries, railways, factories, and building extension in 

 industrial centres. Even in such a poorly wooded 

 country as Britain, it is probable that sufficient timber 

 could be grown in existing woodlands to supply the needs 

 of agricultural districts, for it is a well-known fact that 

 large quantities of foreign timber are imported into them 

 more by reason of its well-seasoned and prepared condi- 

 tion, than on account of the actual scarcity of the home- 

 grown article. 



But taking a brief review of things as they are found 

 to-day throughout Europe, it will easily be discovered 

 that the fact is being universally recognised that private 

 enterprise will not or cannot maintain a supply of timber 

 which will meet the needs of modern civilisation. In 

 several countries natural advantages exist for favouring 

 the growth of timber without artificial assistance, which 

 have already been referred to, and in these an adequate, 

 or even a surplus supply is still being maintained. But, 

 apart from these, it has either been found necessary to 

 draw upon foreign countries, or to inaugurate a system 

 of vState forestry on a larger or smaller scale, according to 

 circumstances. It has been clearly demonstrated that 

 the private owner of land, when unassisted or uncon- 

 trolled by the government, invariably fails to ensure, by 

 rational management, a normal yield of timber from 



B 



