JANUARY 3 



forestry as farming on a large scale. It requires, however, 

 more than common prescience to adopt a revolution in a 

 system of cultivation wherein the rotation of crops must 

 be measured, not by seasons, but by centuries. 



In 1887 Sir John Lubbock's Select Committee of the 

 House of Commons pronounced British woodland manage- 

 ment to be capable of material improvement, and reported 

 themselves as satisfied that a considerable proportion of the 

 foreign timber imported might be grown at home under 

 a more skilful system. These imports at that time were 

 reckoned at the value of £16,000,000, exclusive of forest 

 products other than timber to the value of £14,000,000. 

 Their value had increased to upwards of £21,000,000 in 

 1899, whereof £5,000,000 was paid for rough-hewn logs, 

 and £16,000,000 for sawn timber. The latter import 

 consisted nearly entirely of pine or fir from the Baltic, 

 Scandinavia, and Canada, and there exists no physical 

 reason why every foot of this should not have been grown 

 on British soil had it been the will of our people to do so. 

 Of course there remains the economic question, whether 

 British land is not or cannot be turned to more directly 

 profitable account than in timber -growing. Of the 

 16,000,000 acres which the Select Committee reported as 

 being waste land, producing no crop of any kind, a great 

 deal yields a fine rent for sporting purposes. Many a 

 Highland proprietor derives a larger annual revenue by 

 letting his land as a deer forest than if it were covered 

 with trees managed on business principles. But that may 

 not always be the case; indeed, a great deal of these 

 16,000,000 acres is of little or no value for sporting 

 purposes, especially in Ireland; and Mr. Nisbet, in his 

 recent admirable contribution to the Haddon Hall Library 



