PROSPECTS AND POSSIBILITIES OF FORESTRY 41 



difference of soil in another, and the future values of timher 

 be an unknown quantity in all, yet the present state of the 

 timber trade, and the steady exhaustion of all known sources 

 of supply, render the planting of certain classes of land no 

 more risky a speculation than hundreds of investments made 

 in the financial world day by day. 



But the fact that much land of low agricultural value is 

 suitable for planting must not be taken as an indication that 

 the whole of the poorly rented land of the country can be 

 profitably utilised in this way. A glance at hundreds of 

 existing plantations throughout England will convince the 

 experienced forester that they have failed to return the 

 money originally invested in them. They may have produced 

 trees, and even timber, but their rate of growth has been 

 so slow, or disease has made much havoc among them, that 

 they cannot be considered examples of profitable forestry by 

 any means. Eeasons for such cases have already been given, 

 and the only way to avoid their repetition in the future is by 

 a careful selection of soils to plant, and species to plant them 

 with, for the former is as important as the latter. 



A careful examination of instances which are supposed 

 to represent profitable forestry reveals the fact that the 

 agricultural value of land affords no safe criterion of its value 

 for forestry purposes. A soil which may let readily at 10 s. 

 to 15 s. per acre when under pasture, such as stiS' adhesive 

 clays, may not be worth 2s. 6d. for growing timber when the 

 various costs of growing and marketing the crop are con- 

 sidered. A great deal of land, on the other hand, which is 

 not worth 2 s. 6d. for grazing purposes, is capable of growing 

 coniferous timber to the value of 10s. to 20s. per acre per 

 annum, and thousands of acres of such land are lying idle 

 in different parts of the country. Such land will almost 

 invariably prove to be deep gravels with a poor surface soil 

 which cannot be profitably cultivated, or soils which occupy 

 steep hillsides and ravines, or the surface of which is so 

 broken up with rock or gravelly hillocks that they can 

 neither be grazed nor cultivated with much advantage to 

 either landlord or tenant. It usually happens that the soil 

 lying between the interstices of rocks is of the very best 

 description, and trees are about the only form of vegetation 



