FORESTRY IN BRITAIN, 61 
But some one may say, ‘‘ We, too, have State forests!” Yes, 
but it is almost absurd to mention them in the same sentence with 
those of the Continent for any part they play at present in con- 
nection with forestry in Britain, The nine thousand acres at 
Windsor are mainly covered with specimen trees. Of the twenty- 
five thousand acres in the Forest of Dean, a portion is supposed 
to be cultivated for a profitable crop, but appears to result in an 
annual deficit. The New Forest, with its sixty-three thousand 
acres of soil-area, affords us one of the most interesting object- 
lessons, showing the triumph of sentiment over common-sense, 
that the country affords. Its history is well enough known, and 
I need only remind you that Parliament has decreed the major 
part of it to persist as a barren waste, whilst in the remainder 
which is covered with trees the practice of forestry is prohibited, 
so that slowly the whole is going to wreck and ruin. This 
illustrates the value to us of State forests! In the days of the 
““wooden walls” the dockyards obtained valuable timber from 
them, but now their large area is, one may say, of no State service 
whatever as forest, if one excepts a small portion of Windsor 
Forest recently attached for instruction purposes to Coopers Hill 
College. There can be no question that if the State had set an 
example of scientific forestry in even a portion of these areas, the 
practice of sylviculture now throughout the country would have 
been very different. 
I need not dwell on the fact that the conditions of land tenure 
in the country have exercised an important influence upon the 
extent of wood-planting in the country ; and they must always do 
so. ‘The oak scorns to grow except on free land,” is a saw that 
sums up pithily the relationship between land-laws and woodlands 
in England. Copyholders could hardly be expected to plant much 
timber when the lord of the manor claimed the crop; and I believe 
it is possible in some counties to trace the boundaries of copyholds 
by the entire absence of trees on one side of a line and their 
luxuriant growth on the opposite side. The intricacies of entail, 
and the fact that liferenters had themselves to bear the expense of 
planting, except where necessary for shelter, without prospect of 
seeing a return for the outlay, must have operated prejudicially to 
an increase in woodlands. Happily since 1882 in England, and 
by an act of last year for Scotland, the last-mentioned restriction 
upon tree-planting is removed, 
Nor shall I pause over the question of game, which has been at 
