THE STATE AND PRIVATE OWNERS 2G1 



special departments are entrusted with the administra- 

 tion and control of the financial and national policies 

 adopted, according to the requirements of the country, 

 and the existing conditions of land utilisation. Only in 

 this way can the necessary attention and energy required 

 for the successful development of the scheme be obtained. 

 A forest service attached to a larger State department is 

 invariably overshadowed and suppressed by its head, and 

 sooner or later becomes an apathetic and time-serving 

 branch, without mind or driving force, swathed in red 

 tape, and incapable of doing satisfactory work, or becom- 

 ins: a living- factor in the national life. 



The only semblance to a forest service which exists in 

 Great Britain is the Office of Woods, formerly in charge 

 of the lands forming the perquisites of the Crown, 

 and now regarded as an Imperial asset. This depart- 

 ment has in its charge, as already stated, about 60,000 

 acres of woodland, and forms, so far as size and import- 

 ance goes, an adequate State forest department, if 

 developed and improved. Hitherto the practical work 

 in the Crown woods has been entrusted to officials with 

 very little knowledge of the rule of thumb of practical 

 woodwork as practised in Britain, and still less of the 

 technicalities relating to economic forestry. These offi- 

 cials have naturally favoured a policy of inaction as far 

 as possible, partly to conceal their own incompetence, 

 partly to save themselves a good deal of trouble, and only 

 occasionally has a system of fitful clearing and replanting 

 been adopted, which has slightly improved the economic 

 condition of the timber crop in Crown woods of late years. 

 The general result has been that the Crown woods of the 

 present day are being worked at a loss, and are generally 

 of much less benefit to the country than they should be. 

 Committees appointed in the early part of the nineteenth 

 century revealed the fact that, while the higher salaried 



