REQUIREMENTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM 53 



are usually sufficient to more than provide for their 

 economical maintenance, long continued neglect, or ex- 

 cessive fellings by a previous generation, may entail a 

 heavier expenditure in improvement and restocking than 

 should be legitimately borne by one individual, and in 

 recognition of the possibility of this being the case, assist- 

 ance is often given in the form of loans at a low rate of 

 interest, the sale of cheap trees, suspension or reduction 

 of rates and taxes on young woods, subsidies for planting 

 bare land, and technical advice and assistance in all 

 matters connected with forest management. Under such 

 conditions there is then a double inducement given to 

 the private wood-owner to maintain his woods, and forest 

 destruction is adequately guarded against. 



In Great Britain the only form of assistance rendered to 

 the private owner by the State is a limited amount of 

 advice at a cheap rate, and loans at a comparatively high 

 rate of interest. In Ireland, an additional advantage is 

 offered to planters in a small way, by an arrangement 

 made by County Councils for supplying trees at wholesale 

 prices. Apart from these feeble forms of assistance, it may 

 be said that the private wood-owner is entirely left to his 

 own devices, and that three-fourths of the entire woods in 

 the country could, for all the law of the land could say 

 to the contrary, be swept off the face of Great Britain as 

 fast as timber merchants could buy and fell them. 



The general effect of this absence of State control over 

 private woods has been that the British Isles are gradu- 

 ally decreasing their economic forest areas, while the 

 depreciation in their value through excessive thinnings 

 and premature clearings during the last twenty or thirty 

 years cannot be less than an enormous sum. This de- 

 crease in area and value is due to various causes, but is 

 probably chiefly attributable to the financial difficulties 

 which have surrounded the upkeep of large agricultural 



