REVIEWS OF BOOKS. 331 



mitted in the woods, because the pheasants are either laying or 

 hatching ; from Midsummer till October, the coverts must be kept 

 quiet and free from intrusion, in case the birds should be scared 

 off the ground ; and from October to February, as little forestry 

 work as possible must be permitted till the pheasants are shot. 

 This composes the whole year, during which the forester's work 

 must be done by fits and starts, by the grace of the keeper. 

 True, the author is not very consistent in his denunciation, for 

 two pages further on he states : " The quietness and repose of 

 Continental forests, even of small extent, are a contrast to the 

 bustle that goes on in English plantations." As a matter of fact, 

 it is evident to anyone that much of the arrangement and manage- 

 ment of British woodlands are subservient to the interests of 

 game. Not only is the forester excluded at times when sylvi- 

 cultural work should claim his attention, but in many other ways 

 the woods suffer in the interests of sport. The provision of 

 rabbit and hai-e-proof fencing — and especially now that these 

 animals have learned to climb ! — is a serious burden on forestry. 

 Even in old woods, where the trees are beyond the stage when 

 ground game usually bark them, the presence of rabbits and hares 

 makes any attempt at natural regeneration impossible. Then, 

 again, we may have a wood of Scotch fir or larch, with a mixture 

 of spruce, silver fir, or beech, where the former trees are growing 

 well above the latter, the spruces, etc., in fact, serving the purpose 

 of a soil-pi'otection wood. In this way, they are fulfilling a most 

 useful function, and should a gap occur amongst the Scotch firs or 

 larches, the repressed trees are at once in a position to shoot up 

 and fill the vacant space. But a dense wood offers but little food 

 to rabbits or bares, and the usual result of a hard winter is that 

 the trees constituting this soil-protection wood are destroyed by 

 barking. So long as a proprietor fully recognises the incompati- 

 bility of profitable sylviculture and so-called game preservation, 

 no one has any right to object, but it is time to enter a protest 

 when forestry is said to be unprofitable under the conditions that 

 prevail on many estates. 



As so often happens in the case of a convert, Mr Simpson not 

 only adopts the new faith, but shows a disposition to go further 

 than those who have never known any other principles. There 

 is much truth in the assertion, when he says, "The opinion is 

 almost universal among owners of woods, that, as soon as a planta- 

 tion gets crowded, it is goirg to ruin, whereas it is just in the 



