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Britain are, it will be seen, not wholly irremoveable, nor are the ob- 

 stacles to betterment insurmountable. And the question we have now 

 to discuss is — How are these to be counteracted and overcome ? By what 

 means is it possible to bring forestry in Britain more in line with that 

 of other nations ? At the outset I would say that if forestry is to be es- 

 tablished on a s und c -mmercial basis, the only one on which it should 

 rest, if we are to have a national home-timber industry, it can only be 

 when the issues involved are more fully realised than they are nowadays. 

 As in agricultural practice failure can only be obviated by the applica- 

 tion ef scientific methods in farm cultivation, so is it with forestry. To 

 becom e a profitable industry it must be practised as an applied science, 

 and not as an empirical routine. 



26. We live beyond the days when it would be possible to apply the 

 autocratic remedy for want of woodlands introduced in Scotland by the 

 Jacobean Statute, which compelled the landlords not only to plant wood 

 and Forest and make hedges, but also enjoined them under penalties to 

 see that each of the tenants planted one tree for every marke of land. 

 Nor, indeed, can much be said of the success of the compulsion. And I 

 do not imagine anything could be gained nowadays by the method 

 adopted in Scotland in the middle of last century by the " Select Society" 

 as it was called, of offering a premium to farmers who planted the most 

 trees within a specified time. That such processes were deemed neces- 

 sary is interesting as showing how old standing has been the recognition 

 of the want of sufficient woodland area in the country. At the present 

 time there are those who would reverse, as it were, the process of the 

 old statute, and who look to the acquisition by the State of large areas 

 of waste land, and their afforestation by it, for the solution of this fores- 

 try question. It is, no doubt, a wise policy which encourages private 

 enterprise to deal with the details of industries, and only invokes State 

 aid as a directive and controlling force when its need can be clearly 

 shown. That there is need for State aid in the case of forestry I do not 

 deny, but it is not required to the extent just mentioned. 



27. I unhesitatingly say that the State ought to treat the forest areas 

 now in its possession in a reasonable and scientific manner, instead of 

 leaving them as objects for the finger of scientific scorn. They might 

 be made, in part at least, models of the best forestry practice. It is no 

 use to dispute with the sentiment and taste which have prevailed in 

 making the New Forest what it now is, and it is hopeless to expect an 

 unanimous verdict as to the destiny of State woods and upon the method 

 of treatment to which they should be subject We have had recently, 

 in the lively discussion regarding the management of Epping Forest, 

 an illustration of how large is the number of people who have views 

 upon the subject of the management of woodlands, and how the majority 

 of them, if they had their way, would, through ignorance, defeat the 

 very object they desire to acomplish. We must be prepared in any pro- 

 posal for utilisation of State forests to incur the opposition of those who 

 regard all scientific handling of woods as vandalism, although I do not 

 know that forestry in itself involves a want of recognition of the beauti- 

 ful, or dulls the feelings which a sylvan landscape invokes in the minds 

 of those in touch with nature. It is allowed there are areas in our State 

 forests sacred by many memories, possessing a grandeur and picturesque- 



