4 VALUE OF LAND 



those plantations grow was reckoned at 10s. an 

 acre, as compared with land of the same description 

 held by farmers in the neighbourhood ; and had 

 tliis land been occupied by a farmer, the proprietor 

 would have received only L.30 for an acre during 

 sixty years ; but as occupied by plantations, we see 

 that he received by the end of sixty years, when 

 the crop of wood was cleared off, no less than L.3, 3s. 

 for each year of the period the land was under a 

 crop of wood ; and upon deducting original outlay, 

 in the form of fencing and planting, as well as 

 labour in keeping good the plantation and in cutting 

 doAvn the trees for sale, and also compound interest 

 upon the original outlay and rent progressively, 

 during the periods no return was received, it will 

 be found that such land occupied by wood will pay 

 three times the amount of money, at the end of 

 sixty years, that it could do under the hands of a 

 farmer. 



Again, upon the estate of Arniston, in Mid- 

 Lotliian, where the plantations are hard wood of 

 general sorts, with a mixture of firs to act as 

 nurses, I have calculated upon the same principle 

 as that above mentioned, and find the medium value 

 of an acre of land as under wood upon this estate 

 to be, at the end of seventy years, L.570. 



The land in the same neighbourhood lets at 30s. 

 for farm cropping. Now, dividing this L.570 by 

 seventy, the number of years the ground lay under 



