494 ■ DISCUSSION 



Sir Roy Robinson said that, in the course of his work dealing with the 

 forests of this country, he travels over as much of the land as any man in 

 Great Britain. It is always a source of great amazement to him that land 

 can be wasted in the way it is wasted. Good pastures are found overrun 

 with bracken and foliage and infested and spoilt, and that is the type of 

 land which very often comes to the Forestry Com.mission to be planted, 

 sometimes undeservedly, with trees. 



It seemed to him there are two main branches of planning the land : 

 first, to make the right use of land now wrongly used, and, secondly, rightly 

 to use land already nominally put to the right use but badly managed. 

 The second question is purely one of management, and is relatively easy, 

 but when it comes to the question of saying that a certain bit of land shall 

 be used for this or that purpose, serious difficulties arise. When you come 

 to plan the land in detail you find that the prophet who said how he 

 would have planned Britain thirty years ago would have to eat his words 

 to-day. 



The Acland plan for improving and increasing the woodlands of the 

 country is the only plan formed in the days immediately after the war which 

 has been carried out consistently. In the course of that plan the Forestry 

 Commission are trying to do two things, and probably more. An attempt 

 is being made to increase the woodland area by roughly two million acres, 

 and 500,000 acres of plantation have been purchased towards that end. 

 An attempt is being made to get the private woodlands of the country in 

 order. That is a very difficult thing to do, because the owner of woodland 

 to-day suddenly finds that the competition for pulp-wood in North Europe 

 is so great that there are not enough pit props to go round in this country. 

 Pit props are required in case of emergency, because if you cannot get pit 

 props you cannot get coal, and without coal you cannot have steel and 

 other things. That explains very briefly why it is necessary for the State 

 to take a very real interest in the production of timber. The Commission 

 hope to purchase enough timber to be self-supporting for a period of three 

 years. 



The mere ownership of large areas of land, which runs now into one 

 million acres, brings with it other things. It has given the opportunity of 

 providing recreational facilities. Such development has been made in the 

 New Forest. A national forest park has been set up at the head of Loch 

 Long and Loch Fyne in Scotland, and another is being opened in Snow- 

 donia. The various areas developed by the Commission become admirable 

 places for deer, and it is probably safe to say that there are more deer in 

 this country to-day than at any time in the past 200 years. 



The Commission are trying to keep the pine marten going, and might 

 be quite willing to try putting brown bears in the bigger forests. 



Sir Daniel H.^^ll, K.C.B., F.R.S., said he was chiefly concerned with 

 the question of how far we may be able to replan our farming land to 

 better ends than it is used at the present time. The difficulty the farmer 

 has been going through has been how to adapt his industry (and it is a slow, 

 long-period industry) to rapid changes in the environment in which he 

 has got to live. That, and the march of scientific progress, has brought 

 about, to a very large extent, the disintegration of our old farming. 



Is it worth while to try and set about the planning of our agriculture ? 

 The farmer does not want it. He only asks to be left alone. But he is 

 at the mercy of other forces, and if agriculture is to be preserved it needs 

 replanning. Though there can be found in this country finer examples 

 of farming than in any other country in the world, the industry, taking it 



