62 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
once the origin and the destruction of forests in Britain. Not that 
it is an unimportant element. But the instinctive love of sport in 
the British race is proof against all argument of utility, and the 
needs of sport will always be a barrier, as they have been in the 
past, to the planting of large areas well adapted for timber-growing. 
It cannot well be otherwise. Landowners can hardly be expected 
to forego large and immediate game-rents for what appear the long- 
delayed, even though possibly greater, profits of timber-cultivation. 
In this case the inevitable must be accepted. Nevertheless, there 
are large areas, the game-rent of which is infinitesimal for their 
acreage, which might be planted. 
The most potent factors in bringing about the present condition 
of our woodlands are probably to be-looked for in the nature of the 
crop itself, and in the want of appreciation of its character mani- — 
fested by landowners; in a word, in a want of knowledge of the 
principles of scientific forestry. Forestry is handicapped as com- 
pared with agriculture by the fact that the crop cannot be reaped 
within the year. The owner who plants and incurs the initial 
expense of stock, fencing, and perhaps draining, may after some 
years secure intermediate return from thinnings, but it will rarely 
happen that he reaps the final yield at maturity of the crop he has 
sown ; it will fall to his successor. It is this planting for posterity 
that makes demands upon the landowner to which he is unequal. 
Hence it comes about that woodlands, beyond what may be 
requisite in the way of cover plantation and for shelter, are often 
regarded as expensive luxuries, and, in the time of high agricultural 
values, landowners have even grubbed out trees to make way for 
annual crops yielding an immediate return. But scientific tree- 
growing for profit does not consist in the covering of soil-area 
indiscriminately with trees, without definite system and relation of 
its parts one to the other. Just as the farmer has to plan his 
rotations on a definite system with reference to his total acreage, 
so in properly managed timber-growing must areas be arranged in 
such a way that some part of the forest will be yielding annually 
its final return of mature crop, and cleared areas will by a natural 
process of regeneration replenish themselves without recourse to the 
expensive operation of planting being necessary. Scientifically 
worked, a forest area on suitable land, of which there is such 
abundance in Britain, should be capable of yielding an annual net 
revenue as regular as that obtainable by any other form of soil 
cultivation. 
