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the expense of planting, except where necessary for shelter, without 

 prospect of seeing a return for the outlay, must have operated prejudi- 

 cially to an increase in woodlands. Happily since 1882 in England, 

 and by an Act of last year for Scotland, the last-mentioned restriction 

 upon tree planting is removed. 



17. Nor shall I pause over the question of game, which has been at 

 once the origin and the destruction of forests in Britain. Not that it is 

 an unimportant element. But the instinctive love of sport in the 

 British race is proof against all argument of utility, and the needs of 

 sport will always be a barrier, as they have been in the past, to the 

 planting of large areas well adapted for timber growing. It cannot 

 well be otherwise. Landowners can hardly be expected to forego large 

 and immediate game rents for what appear the long-delayed, even 

 though possibly greater, profits of timber cultivation. In this case 

 the inevitable must be accepted Nevertheless, there are large areas, 

 the game-rent of which is infinitesimal for their acreage, which might 

 be planted. 



18. The most potent factors in bringing about the present condition 

 of our woodlands are probably to be looked for in the nature of the crop 

 itself and in the want of appreciation of its character manifested by 

 landowners ; in a word, in a want of knowledge of the principles of 

 scientific forestry. Forestry is handicapped as compared with agricul- 

 ture by the fact that the crop cannot be reaped within the year. The 

 owner who plants and incurs the initial expense of stock, fencing, and 

 perhaps draining, may after some years secure intermediate return from 

 thinnings, but it will rarely happen that he . reaps the final yield at 

 maturity of the crop he has sown ; it will fall to his successor. It is 

 this planting for posterity that makes demands upon the landowner to 

 which he is unequal. Hence it comes about that woodlands, bej ond 

 what may be requisite in the way of cover plantation and for shelter, 

 are often regarded as expensive luxuries, and, in the time of high agri- 

 cultural values, landowners have even grubbed out trees to make way 

 for annual crops yielding an immediate return. But scientific tree- 

 growing for profit does not consist in the covering of soil-area indiscri- 

 minately with trees, without definite system and relation of its part 

 one to the other. Just as the farmer has to plan his rotations on a 

 definite system with reference to his total acreage, so in properly 

 managed timber-growing must areas be arranged in such a way that 

 some part of the f rest will be yielding annually its final return of mature 

 crop, and cleared areas will by a natural process of regeneration re- 

 plenish themselves without recourse to the expensive operation of plant- 

 ing being necessary. Scientifically worked a forest area of suitable land, 

 of which there is such abundance in Britain, should be capable of yield- 

 ing an annual net revenue as regular as that obtainable by any other 

 form of soil cultivation. 



19. It is nevertheless frequently urged as a reason for not growing 

 timber that wood will not pay in Britain. A landowner will tell you he 

 has acres of land which do not return him more than half-a-crown, and 

 if it would pay better he would be glad to put them under timber, but 

 he does not believe it would ; and he will point to rates on woodlands 

 which must be paid although no crop is being reaped. He will de- 



