SOIL AND SURFACE CONDITIONS 139 



is that iu which thriving industries accompany the 

 exploitation of the mature timber, and saw mills, pulp 

 factories, chemical works, and innumerable minor manu- 

 factures and cottage industries, finding employment for 

 thousands of happy workers, appear. Waste land, bare 

 rocks, peat bogs, and even the spoil heaps of mines are 

 to disappear, and every city is to grow its own building 

 timber, and every colliery its own pit wood. The more 

 practical the enthusiast, the greater the dilution of the 

 above picture, until it is gradually reduced in size, and 

 toned down in colour, to practically the same state of 

 affairs as exists to-day. 



Suggestions are, again, frequently made that the fertility 

 of mountain land would increase under a forest crop, and 

 that it might in time be quite an easy matter to plant 

 trees up to 2000 feet above sea-level, by reason of the 

 increasing shelter and soil fertility which would follow 

 the afforestation of the lower slopes. The writer was 

 made responsible by the Royal Commission on Coast 

 Erosion for the statement that land on the Pennine chain 

 had produced profitable timber crops at an elevation of 

 1500 feet. While this is an undeniable fact, it was also 

 carefully pointed out that the results obtained in the 

 instance quoted wore due to exceptional conditions 

 which might not be found in half a dozen places else- 

 where in the British Isles. In the first place, the land 

 was particularly well sheltered for such an elevation ; in 

 the second, it was almost free from peat; and last, but 

 probably not least, the soil was unusually well prepared 

 after the first crop of trees had proved a failure.^ Similar 

 conditions are not easily found at the same or even lower 

 elevations, and vast areas of mountain land are so 

 exposed, and the soil on them in such an unfavourable 

 condition for plant growth, that no conceivable improve- 



1 Vide Trans. Roy. Scot. Arhor. Soc, vol. xx. part i. 



