growing, has suffered such a slump in the last 25 years as hill sheep-farming. There are hundreds of thousands of acres in Scotland, once valuable sheep pasture, now rented at not more than two shillings an acre. From some of it, a good additional return, say a shilling an acre, is obtained for the grouse on it, but a great deal of it is unsuitable for grouse, but very suitable for growing timber. Such land is constantly being offered for sale. Twentyfive years purchase would secure 1,000 such acres for £2,500. If the ground is level, planting 3 feet by 3 feet will take 4,840,000 trees; the cost at £6 an acre, equals £6,000 for the 1,000 acres. On sloping or steep ground fewer trees will be required and the cost will be proportionately less. I make no provision for houses or fences, assuming that the farm is bought all standing, but £500 must be allowed for repairs and preliminary draining, making a total initial outlay of £9,000 on the 1,000 acres. The interest on the balance of £1,000 ought to pay the annual tool bill, and the annual wage bill may be reckoned at

Shall we be able to meet this charge, draw interest on the capital sunk, and hold our capital in hand at the end of 100 years? I think so, even allowing that for the first fifteen years not a farthing of revenue can be drawn from the plantation. By that time the £10,000 sunk will have increased at 3 per cent.compound interest to about £15,000. To secure 3 per cent. upon that sum and to defray the annual expenses of £650, we must show a net annual profit of £1,100 from the 1,000 acres. The returns ought to commence fifteen years after planting, beginning with pit props, for which there is an insatiable demand in this country, chiefly supplied from Norway and Sweden; proceeding to medium sized trees removed in thinning until the period of commercial maturity, which, in the case of Scotch pine and larch, should be reached in 80 or 90 years, when the regular falls will begin. Mr. Nisbet estimates the average annual yield of coniferous timber, Scotch and larch, at 75 cubic feet per acre. Assuming this to be a moderate estimate, and assuming that the price of such timber will not exceed 6d. a foot (an improbably low estimate) your 1,000 acres will be yielding a gross annual income of

Supposing that for the next fifty years the State were to invest £10,000 a year in plantations, it would have made a progressive investment of half a million sterling-the cost of four days campaign against the Boers-yielding about 11 per cent. interest, and instead of a rural population of one shepherd to 100 acres of pasture, there would be one woodman to every 1,000 acres, or a total of 500 woodmen on the State forest of 50,000 acres, instead of 50 shepherds. No trifling consideration this in these days of rural depopulation.

There appeared lately in one of the evening papers a letter from, a noble earl in reference to Mr. Keir Hardie's proposal for State forestry. His lordship declared that it was futile to think of profitable forestry in the United Kingdom for two reasons-first, because of the furious storms which sweep these islands at irregular intervals; second, because the timber produced in our woods is far inferior in quality to that grown on the Continent.

As to the first objection, I deny emphatically that we are more exposed to storm than, say, Norway or Sweden, whence we draw such large supplies of coniferous timber. It is true that we suffer far more from wind damage than is the case in continental forests, but that is the result partly of our custom of planting in narrow belts and isolated small masses, and partly of the mischievous system of overthinning which came into vogue in the nineteenth century. Trees that have been encouraged to grow heads out of all due proportion to their height will succumb to a storm that may be lifted harmlessly over a solid block of well-grown forest. A thousand contiguous acres of woodland will suffer far less from gales than 1,000 acres scattered over an estate of 10,000 acres.

Next, as to the alleged inferiority of British timber to continental. Surely that is a strange allegation against a country that used to supply timber for the noblest fleets that ever

put to sea. I may say in passing that the demand for ship timber had something to do with initiating our vicious system of overthinning. Shipwrights did not want straight boles, they wanted bent timber; and you will actually find in old treatises on forestry instructions about tying down the limbs of oaks to produce the desired contortion. The result has been that we have conceived and aimed at a false ideal. Our notion of what an oak ought to be is framed upon such a magnificent deformity as the "Major" oak in Sherwood Forest.

That we can grow fine straight oak if we choose may be seen in this example from the New Forest, a domain which, unhappily, the State is not permitted to treat on right principles. Here again is a wood of self-sown oak at Thornbury, in Gloucestershire, 30 to 40 years old, which promises to develop into splendid clean timber. But to obtain examples of the highest development of oak timber, we must go to France. Here are a couple of photographs showing the last stage-the final fall-of a forest of sessile-flowered oaks in a French forest.

Now that we want straight, clean timber, there is no country in the world better able to produce it than our own. Ah but, says the timber merchant, your firs are grown too fast. British deal cannot compare with Scandinavian, which is grown much slower. True, but here again the evil comes from over-thinning. Grow your trees in close forest, and no matter what height they attain or how soon they attain it, the annual rings will be close together, and the timber will be slow grown. It is a mere question of forest management. Trees in open order will produce branches and coarse timber, with wide annual rings; trees grown in close canopy will yield clean planks with narrow annual rings. Here are some examples from a wood of Mr. Elwes's, at Colesborne, in Gloucestershire. Most of these trees measure 125 feet in height, and compare favorably in cleanness of bole with the following examples from Savoy-silver fir with a few spruce, and silver fir, with a larch or two.

It is idle to say that timber cannot be grown at a handsome profit in Great Britain, but it is equally idle to attempt to grow it at a profit unless sound principles of commercial forestry are adopted.

I now come to the other branch of my subject -the condition of woodland on private estates in this country. In dealing with that, I must be understood to generalise. I could name cer

tain estates on which the principles of sound forestry are in full practice, and of which the proceeds of the woods contribute a considerable part of the revenue. But taking one estate with another, I shall not be accused of exaggeration if I describe the woods as run upon amateur lines, more or less modified by local custom. It is not the custom to expect a land agent to have had any training in economic forestry; still less likely is it that the owner himself shall have had such training. It would be natural, then, that neither the agent nor his employer should attempt to interfere with the management of the woods." But what landowner is there so poor in spirit that he does not aspireto direct in person the operations in his woods? He has a forester or woodman, no doubt, with an efficient staff under him, but that forester is very seldom remunerated on a scale calculated to secure sound technical knowledge. On some estates he combines the duties of forester with that of head gardener; on others he receives a salary equal to that of a head gamekeeper. He is at best but a foreman woodman, and even if he pursues sound routine operations these are constantly liable to be interrupted or diverted at the caprice of his employer. It would be strange, indeed, if the result of such a want of system proved anything but disastrous. Imagine any man investing liberal capital in a large farm, without any technical knowledge of farming, or the rotation of crops, and yet dictating to his farm bailiff how and where those crops were to be grown. The result would be apparent in a very few seasons, and, so far as that farm was concerned, the balance-sheet would spell bankruptcy. Even in that case, the amateur farmer would have the example of sound agriculture as practised by his neighbour, and he would have the sense to pick up some knowledge as he went along. But where is the amateur forester to turn for guidance in this country? Perhaps there is not within his county a single example of close canopy and clean timber. And further, whereas the effect of bad farming is manifest in two or three seasons, mistakes in forestry do not become apparent for two or three generations.

I stood not long ago beside the owner of one of the noblest parks in England. He had brought me to see an oak wood, originally pure forest, about 50 acres in extent, which was causing him much concern. They were splendid trees, about 180 or 200 years old, averaging 100 feet in height with 40, 50, 60 feet of glorious clean boles. I don't know