448 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



which by means either of irritating expropriation, or else 

 by uneconomic paying through the nose, the State is to 

 acquire and to manage, so as to be able to rival the German 

 Forsten — do not appear to cover the whole ground. Wher- 

 ever five or ten thousand acres can be got together in a 

 block, and wherever the State can economically^ acquire 

 the land, by all means let it do so ! But with our limited 

 territory we shall necessarily have to turn those numerous 

 patches of woodland to account, which dot the country all 

 over, picturesquely enough, but unfortunately in the 

 majority of cases not doing economically anything like 

 justice to the soil they occupy, by reason of the encouraged 

 depredations of game, reckless thinning and general bad 

 management. In view, more particularly, of our preference 

 for hard wood and, among conifers, for larch and silver fir, 

 such patches will serve the cause which we have at heart 

 very well, while continuing to beautify the landscape. The 

 propriety of preserving trees will to a great extent have to 

 determine the line which we shall have to select for following. 



As in the case of most of the questions here touched 

 upon, a point upon which our policy will in great part have 

 to turn, will, in the first place, evidently have to be 

 one of provision of money for the purpose of planting and 

 paying outgoings whilst the timber crop grows. For such 

 provision of money French and Dutch practices afford us 

 at any rate useful hints, to be supplemented by what is 

 done by the German landschaft and the Finnish Savings 

 Banks. And to that provision will have to be added one 

 of qualified compulsion, so as to produce the forest area 

 that the Nation in its own interest and in self-defence unques- 

 tionably requires. Where, in necessaries of State, inde- 

 pendent initiative fails, coercive measures become unavoid- 

 able. And they cannot, in the present instance, prove 

 injurious, so long as they are kept within reasonable bounds, 

 leaving, more in particular, the actual work to be accom- 

 plished, so far as he is willing to perform it, to the owner 

 of the land. 



Such pretentious forest service as they have in France, 

 and, even in a higher degree still, in Germany, would in this 



