THE UTILISATION OF LAND UNSUITABLE FOR AGRICULTURE. 15 



the very soundest portions of probably 200,000 fair-sized Oak 

 trees would be required, and thousands of waggons are every year 

 being turned out. The soles and cross-bearers have hitherto 

 been made almost exclusively of English Oak, but latterly 

 American Oak, a much inferior article, has been substituted in 

 second-class cheaper waggons, quoted at £52. 10s. per coal 

 waggon. Immense quantities of Oak goes also for colliery and 

 other purposes.* 



All circumstances considered, my advice to those about to 

 plant, in the expectation of even moderate profits after, say, forty 

 or fifty years, would be to plant with the most useful species 

 their waste lands as near as possible to railways, canals, and 

 the consumer, and there are such tracts of sufficient extent in 

 England alone (where all the most valuable timbers grow best) 

 to engage the planter for a long time to come. You can hardly 

 travel by any of our main railway lines without seeing ideal 

 tracts of poor land and hill- sides that might be densely wooded 

 for miles, often quite near to some of the largest towns and trade 

 centres. These are the spots I should plant first, leaving all 

 doubtful localities as they are till the last. 



The next consideration is aspect and exposure. If I were 

 asked what was the very worst natural obstacle to the production 

 of useful timber in a reasonable time, I should answer "cold," 

 and especially " exposure to cold winds." Those who condemn 

 thick planting at the outset, from the sight, perhaps, of a 

 crowded young plantation just getting established, do so from 

 want of experience. Too thin planting and too severe thinnings 

 afterwards are alone quite sufficient to far more than turn the 

 scale between profit and loss. Foresters recognise the evils of 

 exposure so far as to plant "nurses" for the protection of the 

 permanent crop, but the nurses are usually a dead loss in them- 

 selves, and take room which could be far more profitably occupied 

 by trees of more value planted thicker. On the Wortley estate, 

 which is high and inland, we have miles of belts planted for 

 shelter, and the behaviour of the trees in these exposed belts 

 affords, as similar belts do everywhere else, a lesson to foresters. 

 However narrow the belt may be, the trees on the exposed side 



* Quite recently a well-known Midland iron company have supplied 

 waggons with light wrought-iron soles in place of oak. Jf these answer 

 much less oak will be sold in future. 



