344 EDITORIAL NOTES. [Oct. 



the woods, and, in fact, everything connected with arboriculture 

 was studied. The subject was of such importance that men of the 

 highest science might be employed in the development of their 

 woods so as to prevent their serious and reckless destruction, and so 

 that by judicious cultivation there might be a systematic production 

 of capital and labour. 



Professor Sidgwick was glad to bring before the committee of the 

 section the matter of recommending a National School of Forestry. 

 Such a recommendation was passed at the concluding meeting of 

 the General Committee. 



The General Peess on Fokestry. — The issue of Sir John 

 Lubbock's Committee's Blue-book towards the close of August has 

 been the occasion of a plentiful crop of " leaders " from the London 

 newspaper press and other organs of public opinion. Landowners, 

 according to the Times, " must learn to exclude sheep and deer, at 

 all events, from part of their forests, to thin out judiciously, to 

 remove the maturer trees by successive fellings, and to act upon 

 the maxim that a forest ought to yield a constant and increasing 

 annual income." The New Forest, instead of a model to private 

 owners, is a warning of the effects of ignorance and lack of 

 care. According to the Standard, the greatest enemies to the 

 Scottish forests are the sheep, and, to a lesser extent, the larger 

 game. Indiscriminate browsing cuts away the undergrowth on which 

 the wood depends for reproduction ; and when the storms which 

 periodically sweep broad tracks through the Highland forests have 

 spent their force, no germs are left for self-perpetuation. In this 

 way the woodlands have turned into heather, to the total exclusion 

 of any other form of vegetation. So extensively, indeed, have these 

 causes operated in Scotland within the century, that the area under 

 wood has decreased by some two hundred thousand acres, and has 

 mostly been exchanged for unproductive moor which still perplexes 

 the Southerner by the name of " forest." Nevertheless, the 

 Standard believes, with Mr. M'Quorquodale, that it is in the 

 Highlands that the main chance for English forestry exists. They 

 consequently offer the best sites for a practical School of Forestry, 

 as the Blair Athole woods alone testify. According to the Daily 

 Telegraph : " The remarks of M. Boppe upon Windsor Forest and 

 the New Forest are fuller of interest than an ordinary novel. ' The 

 surveyor of Windsor Forest,' he says, * is by turns a forest officer, 

 an organizer of shooting parties, a director of royal workshops, and 

 the conservator of a museum of antiquities, and can naturally 



