TREELESS IRELAND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9118, 18 June 1908, Page 4

TREELESS IRELAND.

There are some very outspoken rein an Irish agricultural paper on the way in which the forests wealth of Ireland has been squandered. "What is going on is really not milling," said a witness before the Irish Forestry Commission, "it is the massacre of trees." The paper accuses landlord, small farmer, and the Government, of the mjst wanton extravagance in dealing with the forests of the country. Tim bar has been cut down recklessly, without a thought of the morrow, and no replanting has been done, with the result that the country, once called "the Island of is now the least wooded of any Ejropean country, except Iceland. This recklessness has robbed Ireland of her greatest beauty, left her lields:without shelter, and deprive 1 her of industries which i-i other countries give employment to thousands of people. In Germany, on the other hand, there are quite 1,000,000 people in the forest families, and some 3,000,000 more engaged in industries dependent on a supply of timber. Forestry is regarded there ad a matter of national importance, and the State sees that provision is made for the needs of future generations. The journal calls on the Government to take the matter in hand at :nce. It admits disliking State interference with industry, but here is a case in which such interference is clearly justified, for private individuals can hardly be expected to go in for a wide scheme of tree planting, seeing that they will not reap the benefits of their enterprise.