168 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



must naturally enhance the local value of home-grown wood, and 

 those landowners will reap the greatest advantages whose timber 

 crops are best suited for the market. 



And now, what is the present condition of our three million 

 acres of British woodlands ] No better answer can be given to 

 this question than the following quotation from an article on 

 " Woodlands," by Sir Herbert Maxwell, which appeared in the 

 Nineteenth Century for July 1891: — 



" One chief hindrance to our woodlands being remunerative 

 may be stated at once : we are arboriculturists and sportsmen, 

 not foresters. A large proportion of the land returned as wood- 

 land is really pleasure-ground and game-cover. Thousands of 

 landowners follow on a smaller scale the example set by the 

 .State on a larger in the New Forest and Windsor Forest." 



This is a true indictment, though fortunately there are, at any- 

 rate, some among the Scottish woodlands which certainly cannot 

 correctly be included in such a category. But, even in cases 

 where plantations have been formed with the view of growing 

 timber crops for market, faults have often been committed with 

 regard to the choice of kinds of trees for given soils and situa- 

 tions. Plantations have also often been made in such manner 

 that the individual plants do not stand near enough to each 

 other to form a normal density of crop for the given kinds of 

 trees ; and when this normal density has perhaps been obtained 

 later on, it has sometimes been deliberately interfered with by 

 well-meant but injudicious thinning, which has only too often 

 permanently damaged the crop and depreciated its ultimate 

 market value as timber. These facts are now well known and 

 generally accepted, and this of itself, I feel sure, marks a distinct 

 advance in knowledge of Forestry throughout Britain within the 

 last six or seven years. But, taking facts as the}' are, it must be 

 said that the present condition of Forestry in Britain is not satis- 

 factory. The great majority of the wooded estates throughout 

 Britain are managed upon principles in which considerations as 

 to timber are subordinated to sport. Most of the crops are 

 badly stocked. If plantations, they have usually been made at 

 too wide distances ; while both plantations and natural woods 

 have generally been thinned so heavily, that excessive branch- 

 development has resulted at the expense of length and cleanness 

 of the stem. Mistakes have often been made in the selection of 

 trees when forming new plantations. Again, large numbers of 



