FORESTS IN GREAT BRITAIN. oli 
National Government, except in the East Indian provinces, 
where the forestal department has assumed great importance.* 
In fact, England is, I believe, the only European country 
where private enterprise has pursued sylviculture on a really 
great scale, though admirable examples have been set in many 
others. In England the law of primogeniture, and other insti- 
tutions and national customs which tend to keep large estates 
long undivided and in the same line of inheritance, the wealth 
of the landholders, the special adaptation of the climate to the 
growth of forest-trees, and the difficulty of finding safe and pro- 
fitable investments of capital, combine to afford encouragements 
for the plantation of forests, which scarcely exist elsewhere in 
the same degree. 
In Scotland, where the country is for the most part broken 
and mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has 
been attended with very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that 
many of the most extensive British forest plantations have now 
been formed. But although the inclination of surface in Scot- 
land is rapid, the geological constitution of the soil is not of a 
character to promote such destructive degradation by running 
water as in Southern France, and it has not to contend with 
the parching droughts by which the devastations of the torrents 
are rendered more injurious in those provinces. 
It is difficult to understand how either Jaw or public opinion, in 
a country occupied by a dense and intelligent population, and, 
comparatively speaking, with an infertile soil, can tolerate the 
* The improvidence of the population under the native and early foreign 
goveraments has produced great devastations in the forests of the British East 
Indian provinces, and the demands of the railways for fuel and timber have 
greatly augmented the consumption of lumber, and of course contributed to 
the destruction of the woods. The forests of British India are now, and for 
several years have been, under the control of an efficient governmental organi- 
zation, with great advantage both to the government and to the general private 
interests of the people. 
The official Reports on Forest Conservancy from May, 1862, to August, 1871, 
in 4 vols. folio, contain much statistical and practical information on all sub- 
jects connected with the administration of the forest. 
