Improvement of Waste Lands. 
325 
mcnt of climate and provision of shelter for cultivated lands — 
are speedily attained. 
If this twofold object be kept in view, and the land be judi- 
ciously selected for planting, the benefit conferred on a hill-side 
farm by the shelter gained will more than compensate for the 
land taken. If, for instance, from a farm of 1000 acres, — worth 
a rental of 10s. per acre, or 500/., — 100 acres be thus taken for 
planting, at the end of ten years the cost of planting and rent 
lost, with interest thereon, will amount to 13/. per acre, or loOO<?. 
in all : but the shelter henceforth afforded will probably give 
to the remaining 900 acres an increased value of 125. per acre, 
or a total value of 540/. per annum, a sum which will pay a 
small interest on the outlay, besides extinguishing the rent on 
the land planted ; the thinnings, at say twenty-five years' end, 
will produce about 3/. per acre, and reduce the charge to 10/- 
per acre ; and the improved rent thenceforth will pay a fair in- 
terest on the charge, whilst the ulterior returns will be so much 
clear gain. 
Even if this be an over-estimate, it can well stand being re- 
duced, and may serve to indicate the nature of the benefits to be 
derived, and induce us to investigate, more exactly than has been 
done hitherto, the extent of the advantages of the shelter afforded 
by trees to cultivated lands in exposed situations. 
In some places, however, trees will not grow sufficiently high 
in ten years to afford much shelter ; but generally where this 
occurs, if the lands have been properly planted, it will be found 
that in their natural state they are not worth IO5. per acre : in 
which case a larger number of years than that above assumed 
would elapse before the estimated charge of 13/. per acre Avould 
be reached. 
When in the North- West Highlands in the summer of 1865, I 
measured larch trees in a plantation on the estate of Ardintoul, 
Avhich at the age of twenty years were from 40 to 45 feet high, and 
a large number of the trees in parts of the inclosure averaged 
about 35 feet. The soil is loose sandy loam resting upon a 
gravelly subsoil. The plantation rises from the seaside at an 
inclination of something like 45 degrees, and the place where 
I measured the trees is about 300 feet above the sea level and on 
the bare side of the hill. 
The prospects of the timber trade may perhaps afford an addi- 
tional inducement to plant part of our waste lands, since the 
demands made upon the natural forests of North America and 
also of Norway and Sweden are so large as to threaten ultimate 
exhaustion. 
According to the published returns of timber entered for duty 
during the year ending 31st December, 1864, it appears that 
