318 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
are considered business principles, are nothing 
like so well stocked or so remunerative as they 
otherwise would be. 
A singular and very convincing proof of this 
was given at the recent discussion on Forest 
Management at the Surveyors’ Institution, when 
Mr. Daniel Watney, the well-known authority 
and expert on British timber, remarked that— 
‘In a paper read by Professor Fisher of Cooper’s Hill before 
the Dublin Royal Society, it was estimated that there were 
4,000,000 acres in Great Britain and 2,000,000 acres in Ireland 
which were available for planting, and, as he gathered from 
the report he had seen of the paper, these 6,000,000 acres 
were expected to be capable of yielding 75 cubic feet per 
acre per annum. He could not quite understand this, for 
if these 75 cubic feet were put at the price of 6d. a foot even, 
the yield would be 37s. 6d. per acre per annum.’ 
The best continuous annual returns known to 
him, Mr. Watney continued, were those of 
30s. an acre yielded by beechwoods in Bucking- 
hamshire (see page 138). Yet I venture to say 
that an anticipation of 75 cubic feet per acre 
is quite justifiable as an average annual yield. 
Often much over 100 cubic feet in actual solid 
contents,—and therefore still considerably in ex- 
cess of 75 cubic feet, even if all be reduced to 
