[To MP EDITOR al ma 4. SPECTATOE."] Stn,—I see you
are attacked (Spectator, January 3rd) for saying that afforestation is the most risky of enterprises. May I give some reasons for agreeing with you.? I believe one of the objects of forests abroad is to supply fuel. Figures showing returns partly derived from this do not apply to Scotland ; even in England I have had good wood for fuel offered free if I would cart it away, and in Scotland peat is available. Your correspondent should visit the School of Government Forestry on Loch Awe : it has been worked for some years. He would see a property better suited than most glens for growing timber, and having a waterway to the railway. He would also find that well-grown timber on neighbouring properties is almost unsaleable. I have known the place for years. As for the State running the business better than private persons, the first planting that was done was not even fenced from rabbits, and was pretty well all rui,ned. I could show him private woods close by much better done. I hear the foresters there now say that eight hundred feet is high enough to plant, and the result of planting the lower slopes is that the high ground is quite valueless; sheep can no longer be run on it. Further, I am told the men employed, at high wages, will not stop: they want to save enough to be off to Canada. In favoured spots you may get people to stay and may grow timber, possibly, at a profit. But I submit: (1) There are no people ready or willing to go and inhabit the remote glens, and you will have to pay them fancy wages if you are going to get them and keep them there. (2) Except in favoured places you cannot grow timber on a large scale at a profit ; it is likely to have no value whatever when grown. (3) If it ie to be grown, the Government is not likely to do it so well as private per- sons ; let anyone go and carefully look over the work done on Loch Awe, or, if he likes, at the Forest of Dean. Finally, may I suggest that when Mr. Lloyd George spoke of the sea being covered by the smoke of burning homes on the Sutherland coast, that smoke probably came from the kelp burning P It was a flourishing industry a hundred years ago. I have a series of pictures taken then of the Scotch coast, and in almost all the smoke of the burning kelp is shown.—I am, Sir, &c.,
UNITED IIITIPERSITY.
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