216 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1917. 
quadrupled; but we are now getting four quarters of wheat per acre, whereas 
then we only got three quarters, the result working out at eight and a half 
bushels per annum per head of the population in 1808, and one and a half in 
1914, between one-fifth and one-sixth of our needs. 
Here is much lost ground to be regained, and all of you can help to regain 
it, especially those who live in or near agricultural districts, by helping the 
farmers with your sympathy and with your support in all legislative measures 
for their benefit. Then in time, as a powerful writer has recently said : ‘ Sturdy 
sons of hill and dale shall till the soil which in years gone by gave us the 
stout yeomen and the bowmen of old England; agriculture, the purest of all 
industries, shall resume its rightful sway over the labours of mankind, and, 
come what may, our granaries and barns shall be stored with the rich harvests 
of God’s generous earth.’ 
In the heart of the New Forest there is, or was last summer, a small Por- 
tuguese colony, its home a hut in a valley, its handiwork a large gap in the 
adjoining woodlands. In five weeks 26 men cut down and prepared for use 
in the trenches in France 26,000 pine trees. Not far off, Irishmen, and soldiers 
called up but found unfit for foreign service, had then cleared some 300 out of 
450 acres of Scotch fir. These are only two of several lumber camps in various 
parts of the forest where saw-mills have been set up worked by Canadian and 
English sawyers. This depletion of forests is going on in various parts 
of the United Kingdom ; I have seen whole mountain-sides in Wales so depleted, 
while little is being done to replenish them. Afforestation on a very large scale 
will be necessary on the conclusion of the war unless we are content to 
let our country become an arid waste. There is plenty of land available, 
unfit, or nearly so, for agriculture, but few will go to the expense of planting 
trees which may yield no return during their lifetime. No return can be 
expected for 30 years or so, and it may be 60 or 70 years before the profit over- 
takes the original cost with (say) five per cent. per annum compound interest. 
Moreover the planting must be done on too large a scale for private individuals, 
however wealthy and patriotic, to do more than a small fraction of it; it will 
have to be done by the State. It will not interfere with agriculture, for most 
work is required in the winter when least is required on the farm, and no valu- 
able agricultural land need be taken. As with agriculture, there will be men 
for the work, soldiers returned from abroad who will not go back to sedentary 
occupations. 
In walking over the Welsh hills I have repeatedly come across roofs and 
stumps of trees in the peat-mosses which frequently cover them; they are 
evidences of former forests. The land is worthless except for the value of 
the peat, the removal of which would, for its valuable by-products, not only as 
a fuel, well repay the expense, and the ground would be rendered suitable for 
planting coniferous trees. It is true that most of our peat-covered mountain- 
land is above the elevation af which it is generally considered that trees will 
flourish (1,500 ft.), but if they did so in the past there seems no reason why 
they should not do so in the future, for it is far more likely that our climate 
has become warmer since trees grew on that land than it is that it has become 
colder. We have also large areas of waste land at lower elevations, extensive 
slopes which are too steep for ordinary cultivation between, and on sheep- 
farms much very poor grazing land which would be more profitably used in 
growing timber. As to the best trees to be planted at different elevations and 
on different soils, at least by private landowners, no doubt there are many 
botanists in our societies who could greatly help with their advice. In the 
last half-century we have doubled our imports of timber and now do not produce 
more than a tenth part of our requirements, although our climate is admirably 
suited to the production of nearly the whole. 
We are far behind most European countries in the relative area of our tim- 
bered land. For instance, nearly half the area of Russia and of the Scandi- 
navian countries is wooded, about 26 per cent. of the area of Germany, about 
17 per cent. of that of France, and the same of Belgium, the most densely 
populated country in Europe until its devastation and depopulation by the 
Germans, but only about four per cent. of the area of the United Kingdom, 
