14 POSITION OF AFFORESTATION QUESTION 



his work carried out under the auspices of the Royal 

 Society was successful in providing the Navy with its 

 requirements a hundred years later. It has also been 

 shown that this excellent work was not continued after 

 1820 or thereabouts. The nineteenth century saw a 

 change in the materials required for shipbuilding and 

 the removal of import duties from colonial and foreign 

 timber ; economic factors which may be said to have 

 sounded the death knell of British forestry, already in 

 a moribund condition. It became unprofitable. And 

 yet it had been a profitable rural industry for centuries 

 in this country. It was not that the industry would 

 not still pay. It was simply that the old Enghsh 

 methods of growing timber which dated from 1540 

 or thereabouts, and which in that period had spread 

 throughout this island and across into Ireland, no 

 longer provided the clean stems free from knots required 

 by the market. The markets had changed both in 

 this respect and in the kinds of timber (species of tree) 

 they required, and we continued on the old lines growing 

 material for which there was no demand.^ Practically 

 throughout the latter half of the last century the 

 woods came to be looked upon chiefly from the point 

 of view of game coverts and ornaments to large estates. 

 We depended almost entirely on imports for our sup- 

 phes of forestry materials. 



It is not proposed to burden this article with a 

 wealth of statistics. Figures, we all know, can be made 

 to show anything. But it will be necessary to glance 

 at the areas of land in Great Britain and Ireland and 



1 This subject is dealt with at greater length in Article XII, 

 pp. 163-5- 



