THE UTILISATION OF LAND UNSUITABLE FOR AGRICULTURE. 18 



good management and the work that lay at his hand. So the 

 advocates of planting waste lands, I perceive, generally wish to 

 start somewhere about John o'Groats, or the Land's End, the 

 west coast of Ireland, or the mountain-tops of the Isle of Man, 

 where I understand a start has already been made, and neglect 

 far more suitable and likely tracts of useless land at their doors. 

 If experience of growing timber in such out-of-the-way localities 

 up to the present time be worth anything, it is that when a 

 vendor has any considerable quantity to dispose of he can hardly 

 give it away. The truth, as I have already explained, is that 

 every mile farther you get away from your customer, or from a 

 railway or wharf, you reduce the prospect of profit till a limit is 

 reached where profits disappear altogether. When a man buys 

 timber in the wood or sells it from there, the first thing he 

 deducts is the cost of felling, cleaning, delivery, and all inci- 

 dental expenses. Whatever these amount to they are deducted 

 from the price expected from the consumer, and the difference, 

 after allowing for the profit to middlemen, if any, is the value 

 the producer receives, which in many cases does not at present 

 pay the rent of the land. As I have pointed out, the conversion 

 of timber on the spot saves much, but in any case the expense is 

 always considerable, and as in the past, so in the future, the 

 income and expenditure in the production and disposal of timber 

 are likely to maintain their present relative balance. There is 

 no limit to the operations of the purchaser of home-grown timber 

 as regards distance, except the cost of delivery. It is that alone 

 that hinders the realisation of those windfalls that periodically 

 occur in Scotland, otherwise I have no doubt but that the York- 

 shire saw-mills alone could deal with the whole of the blown- 

 down timber in a short while. I have known one purchaser to 

 send 20,000 cubic feet of Spruce windfalls from Dumfriesshire to 

 the borders of Nottingham to one colliery owner within a month. 

 The middleman cleared just Id. per foot by the transaction, but I 

 doubt if the owner of the trees got as much, and the timber could 

 not have been sold at all if the rail had not been convenient and 

 other facilities afforded.* There ought to be (and I believe there 

 are) large quantities of Fir timber in Scotland now fit for mining 



* Since the above was written I have been assured by a Scotch agent 

 in Perthshire that some owners of windfalls paid large sums to assist users 

 to remove the timber, which was itself given away. 



