CHAPTEE VIII 



SOME FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF BRITISH FORESTRY 



The question as to whether British forestry is a paying 

 concern or not has frequently been discussed with greater 

 or less warmth by interested parties. Considering that 

 the majority of British woods are small, straggling, and 

 irregular in outline, require expensive forms of fencing, 

 and are, in a general way, more subject to mismanagement 

 than any in Europe, it is difficult to imagine how profit 

 could form a prominent feature in the results obtained 

 from them. On a few large estates, where woods are main- 

 tained with the idea of growing timber rather than that of 

 producing game cover, landscape effect, and many other 

 features not connected with money-making, it has long 

 been recognised that they can give as good an account of 

 themselves as grazing or inferior forms of agriculture, and 

 that a gross rental of from 10s. to 30s. per acre can be 

 obtained without difficulty. As a rule, however, actual 

 returns of the latter magnitude are only obtained from 

 favourably situated individual woods and not from large 

 blocks, and so far as the bulk of Enijlish woodlands are 

 concerned it may be frankl}^ stated that profit, calcu- 

 lated on strictly financial methods, is neither obtained nor 

 expected, and that estate woods generally are usually 

 worked at a loss if the capital expenditure on them is 

 taken into account. 



One point has been established fairly clearly in both 

 British and continental experience, however, and that is 

 the fact that small areas of woodland are not profitable 



