LEASE OF AREAS 8i 



as its outcome the certainty that a proportion of the 

 annual amounts of timber, etc., which we require should 

 reach us from Russia during a definite period of years. 



It might be suggested that the most feasible arrange- 

 ment, for there are several ways of deahng with this 

 matter, would be to lease a considerable tract,* or several 

 tracts, of forest for a period of years and exploit them 

 ourselves under such conditions as regards restocking 

 felled areas, etc., as might be agreed upon. We have 

 leased oil areas in Persia. There does not appear to be 

 any reason why we should not assure our timber 

 supplies for the next few decades in the same fashion. 

 Du reste, there is a precedent of a kind ; for the Govern- 

 ment of India leased the valuable deodar forests in the 

 Western Himalaya from their local chieftain owners and 

 exploited them. And this exploitation was commercially 

 most successful both from the Government of India's 

 point of view and that of the chieftains themselves. 



It should, it is submitted, prove quite feasible to 

 arrange for the lease of areas in European Russia, in 

 Finland, and in Western Siberia of sufficient size to 

 guarantee our requirements or the greater portion of 

 them so far as they can be at present estimated for 

 this period of forty to fifty years. For such a length 

 of time must elapse between the afforestation of, we will 

 say, 5,000,000 acres of the afforestable derelict lands 

 in this country, provided this work is taken in hand 

 at an early date and on an adequately large annual 

 scale, and the period at which the woods so planted 

 will become exploitable. 



» This suggestion was first publicly put forward in a paper I 

 read before the Royal Society of Arts in March 1916, 



