AFFORESTING WASTE LANDS. 



WALES : 



Carnarvonshire ; 270 acres, up to 1,000 feet 

 altitude. Cost per acre, including fencing 520 



IRELAND : 



Co. Wicklow; 700 acres, 700 to 900 feet 

 altitude. Cost per acre, including fencing 4 13 11 



The Ross-shire plantation referred to formed a bleak 

 and barren moorland, which the crofters, who used it as a 

 common for their cattle and sheep, absolutely refused to rent 

 at Is. per acre per annum. 



These plantations having been formed on the particular 

 class of soil under consideration, the expenses for all 

 practical purposes may be considered as identical, and, 

 as before stated, a fair amount to put opposite each acre 

 of ground for fencing and planting will be 5. This, 

 with 2 for cost of purchase, and 5s. for incidentals (actually 

 expended in some of the plantations above referred to) 

 would bring the initial total expenditure to 7 5s. per acre. 

 We have already suggested that altogether 1,000,000 acres 

 should be planted over a, period of twenty-five years, at the 

 rate of 40,000 acres per year, which would be an outlaj" 

 of 290,000 a small sum, it will be admitted, when 

 compared with the 25,000,000 annually expended by this 

 country on supplies brought from abroad. 



Financial Returns. The extensive hill-side plantations 

 formed by the late Lord Powerscourt in Ireland, by the 

 Duke of Athol between Dunkeld and Blair Athol, on 

 Glengoy, in Inverness-shire, at Strathkyle in Ross-shire, 

 in Aberdeenshire, and throughout the principality of 

 Wales all of which were formed over thirty years ago, 

 and the cost of planting and after-management carefully 

 recorded are surely sufficient evidence not only of the 

 feasibility of afforesting mountain lands but of the profits 

 which have attended the undertaking, and the vast benefit 

 that has been secured in the way of shelter to the dreary, 

 treeless Wastes and the bleak-exposed uplands where the 

 planting was carried out. As far as actual profit is con- 

 cerned, it will be prudent to assume that for the first 

 twenty years no return whatever will be derived from 



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