Editors Box. 723 



for a position of trust and responsibility he must either go a-begging for 

 patronage, or else remain an obscure labourer all the rest of his days. 



I would say, further, that one reason why the science of forestry lags so 

 much behind in this country is the fact that as yet there is no clearly 

 defined course of study marked out for young men who wish to rise in 

 their profession. For the most part they are left entirely to their own 

 resources in the matter of technical education and self-improvement. The 

 School of Forestry', wliich I expect to see created some day, will no doubt 

 remedy this, but that institution is, I fear, yet a long way off ; so that in 

 the meanwhile I trust the Scottish Arboricultural Society, amongst its 

 other efforts for the advancement of a science dear to us all, will give its 

 immediate attention to the question of helping forward young men in the 

 way I have roughly sketched out. By so doing it will inaugurate a system 

 of training that will have a most salutary effect in stimulating young men 

 to earnest work and study, and, as a consequence, be the active means of 

 raising the status of foresters, and thereby exert a highly beneficial in- 

 fluence in every department of British arboriculture. 



Under Forester. 



COESICAN PINE AND GROUND GAME. 



Sib, — In the Agricultural Gazette of April 18th, 1874, 1 read that rabbits 

 and hares would not touch the Corsican Pine {Pinus laricio). As these 

 pests largely exist in woods under my management, I determined to give 

 these trees a trial, more especially as I am informed that the timber of 

 these pines is very good, and equal to larch ; that they are also quick- 

 growing. Accordingly, in 1874 I planted a few trees, about two feet high, 

 in an open place in the centre of woods nearly 1,000 acres in extent : this 

 spot I selected as being in the heart of the chief game preverves. These 

 trees are at this date growing well and strongly, and have never from the 

 time of planting till the" present been touched by hare or rabbit. 

 When they had so stood for a year I took courage, and in 1875 I planted 

 about 1^ acre of open space {in the same woods, but about half a mile 

 distant from the twelve planted) with the same pine, purchased from the 

 same nursery, of equal growth, and similar in every respect to the first. 

 The rabbits and hares attacked them at once, and within a short time there 

 was not an undamaged tree on the ground. 



Can you or any of your readers give a reason for the wholesale destruc- 

 tion of the second planting ; also of any experience any may have had as 

 to the durability of this pine when used as timber ? — A. C. G. 



AXE versus SAW FELLING OF TIMBER. 



SiB, — In reference to the primitive method of axe-felling a large 

 tree as expressed by your able contributor Mr. J. C. King, in the 

 Journal of Forestry and Estates Management, at page 624, I beg to state 



