6 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



THE UTILISATION OF LAND UNSUITABLE FOE AGRI- 

 CULTURE BY PLANTING WITH FOREST TREES. 

 By Mr. J. Simpson, Wortley. 



The utilisation of land which is unsuited for farming by planting 

 it with forest-trees is a subject which has been dealt with by 

 many writers from various points of view, for foresters differ on 

 the subject of planting waste lands as they do on others con- 

 nected with their business, a fact which has been attributed by 

 some to the absence of any clearly recognised system of forestry 

 in this country as regards the production of timber. I am care- 

 ful to use the word " timber," for even expert Continental 

 foresters admit that British gardeners and foresters can grow 

 " trees," but shrug their shoulders when timber is mentioned, 

 which, one of them has said, we " frequently grow within locked 

 enclosures, of which the forester carries the key in his pocket,"* 

 implying, I suppose, that our operations in this direction are 

 rather peculiar and not very extensive. There can be no doubt > 

 however, about the actual present condition of our British woods* 

 Our mature timber is going down at a rate that few suspect, and 

 nothing like an equivalent is being planted. In many districts 

 Larch, probably the most profitable of all British trees, is prac- 

 tically exhausted. Spruce for mining purposes, which can be pro- 

 duced in thirty or forty years, is even scarcer, although the 

 demand is so great. Ash is almost everywhere scarce, and big 

 Oak, for which the demand (referred to further on) is enormous 

 for railway carriages and waggons, will soon be a thing of the 

 past. Hitherto English Oak exclusively has been used for these 

 purposes, but recently American Oak, and even Pitch Pine — both 

 inferior — have been substituted. Other timbers are being used 

 up at a proportionate rate, and woods are either disappearing 

 altogether or getting so thin as hardly to be worth calling 

 woods. 



I have divided the subject of my paper under four heads : 



* See M. Boppe's paper appended to Report of Select Committee on 

 Forestry. 



