REVIEWS OF BOOKS. 333 



general views, but he rather errs in his detailed recommenda- 

 tions. When he says, " Rapid growers and slow growers should 

 not be planted together," he surely violates a sylvicultural 

 principle. What would he say, for instance, to the mixture of 

 beech and larch, or beech and ash, or silver fir and larch 1 The 

 first, in each case, is a slow-growing tree in comparison with the 

 second, and yet these mixtures are not only, in many cases, 

 permissible but advisable. Light-demanding and shade-beariDg 

 species, in fact, do best in mixture when the former grow more 

 rapidly than the latter, and for this reason the mixture of oak 

 and beech is most satisfactory when the local conditions enable 

 the oak to take the lead, 



Mr Simpson also does well to remind foresters that a degree of 

 thinning that might be sufficient for the larch would be excessive 

 for the spruce. It is not more than a few years since British 

 foresters — and only a few even now ! — realised the fact that 

 woods of different species must be thinned differently. Mr A. C. 

 Forbes was probably right when he stated in a recent essay that 

 the generally over-thin condition of our woods is largely attribut- 

 able to the fact that the larch has long held a place of great 

 importance in British woodlands, and foresters have argued that 

 the amount of thinning suitable for this tree could not be bad for 

 others. That is a doctrine which cannot too soon be abandoned, 

 and Mr Simpson's volume may be depended on to assist in 

 disseminating sounder knowledge. 



In his volume on " Our Forests and Woodlands,' Dr Nisbet 

 devotes the first two chapters to a scholarly summary of the 

 history of the famous English Forests, and of the laws and 

 customs by which they were regulated. The author dwells 

 lovingly on old John Evelyn's " Sylva," and shows that for two 

 hundred years it has exerted an unobtrusive influence on the 

 progress of Eoglish forestry. Following the example of other 

 writers, Dr Nisbet lifts up his voice more in sorrow than in 

 anger against a series of Governments that have, one by one, 

 turned a deaf ear to the appeals of individuals and societies for 

 extension of the recognition of national forestry. But if report 

 does not err, Dr Nisbet must recently have derived some encour- 

 agement from the statement that the State has acquired 4000 

 acres in the valley of the Wye, adjoining the High Meadows 

 Woods and the Forest of Dean, and the presumption is that a 



