76 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1918. 
best of their ability to plant one tree at least on an established day and to 
endeavour to get as many other members of their Society as they can to do 
the same.’ 
Sir Cuartes BAtHurst (now Lord Bledisloe) was very glad to second the 
resolution, which he was sure ought to.commend itself to every patriot who 
realised the position in which we had found ourselves in relation to timber 
during the war, and the extreme difficulty of repairing within a reasonable 
time the wastage which the war has occasioned. He hoped that the resolution 
would not be taken only to refer to those who had large properties or who 
were carrying on scientific operations—he ventured to hope that it would be 
made to apply to ever'yone who owned land of an agricultural character 
throughout the country, so that this patriotic obligation would rest upon and, 
he hoped, affect the conscience of, everyone interested in agricultural land. 
We owed great thanks to Mr. Duchesne for the way in which he had for years 
past pushed the claims of Forestry. ‘The nation was under a real debt to 
him for the work which he had so patriotically undertaken. All his prophecies 
before the war—and he (Sir Charles) had listened to a good many of them— 
with regard to the subject had been more than fulfilled. But an apathetic public 
disregarded his warning. Perhaps Mr. Duchesne and he had that much in 
common, because he had uttered similar jeremiads to deaf ears as to the 
effect on the country of shortsighted neglect in the matter of the home 
production of essential foods. As far as anyone could at present foresee, after 
the war shipping tonnage would be scarce for several years. Unfortunately 
home-grown timber would be scarcer than ever, although we should be all the 
more dependent upon home-grown supplies. The gentleman who had just 
spoken had very properly said that we must increase them, He said that 
landowners would not plant trees. No; a certain sort would not, and he 
for his part, as one of them, did not blame them. It was very difficult to 
induce them to provide any commodities out of which there was not a fair 
chance of making a reasonable profit. He did not regard timber as having 
been in the past such a commodity. We must alter all that, or the country 
would not get timber any more than it could get food without reasonable 
encouragement and inducement. We must look to the Government, not only to 
show us how to do it by carrying on timber production commercially on a 
large scale itself, but also to help those who were prepared to co-operate with 
it in this national task. He lived on the border of the Forest of Dean; 
and the past experience there of commercial timber production on the part of 
the Government was not such as to carry great conviction to the individual 
landowner who was prepared to do his part in his own generation. In the 
further course of his remarks, Sir Charles said that there was a great scarcity 
of timber seed, and asked what was the Government doing to provide this 
timber seed, to enable landowners to carry out the task that they were asked 
by the Government to carry out for the next ten or twenty years? They were 
cutting down in the summer trees which in the autumn might yield some of 
these seeds. Sir Charles concluded with the observation. that he always listened 
to Mr. Duchesne with increasing interest and increasing conviction, and he 
looked forward to the time when all landowners, and perhaps the general 
public also, would realise the enormous importance of the gospel which Mr. 
Duchesne so effectively preached. 
Mr. A. W. Oxe (Brighton and Hove Natural History and Philosophical 
Society) suggested that the names of John Evelyn and William ‘Cobbett should 
be associated with the subject, and after remarking that everything was going 
to be done after the war, asked what was going to happen in the case of 
the insect pests, with the fungi and the other things that were spoiling the trees 
as they existed now. He did hope that something would be done at once. 
Mr. Wrt1aM Date (Hampshire Field Club and Archeological Society) asked 
Mr. Duchesne why he had got his knife into the bracken. It made an excellent 
and exceedingly warm litter; he had also heard that the tops made excellent 
food ; but he had not had the courage to try them. 
The PresteEnt remarked that he had. They were not nice, but they were 
good. 
