334 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH kRBORICTJLTUBAl SOCIETY. 



part at ?eait of this area will be devoted to sylviculture. Signs 

 are not wanting that these State forests in the south-west of 

 Erigland are entering on a new regime, and when the results are 

 demonstrated to he satisfactory, perhaps we may witness a further 

 extension of the principle of State-ownership. 



The third chapter is devoted to a historical and technical 

 account of the oak. He puts the case in its most favourable 

 light for the hedgerow oak, when he says: "It is the best of 

 hedgerow trees, for it neither robs the soil of food intended for 

 the crops, nor tends to hinder the plough by throwing out lorg 

 shallow roots like ash and elm ; nor does it injure the crops by 

 overshadowing to so great an extent as some trees." If the oak 

 be tended in a park or hedgerow so as to grow up with a tall 

 straight bole, and a small crown, it will doubtless do the 

 minimum of injury to the crcps in its neighbouihocd, but this 

 is not the type of stem that one usually meets with under such 

 circumstances, and, on the whole, it must be said that in many 

 paints of the country hedgerow timber is excessively abundant. 

 That a sprinkling of trees along the boundary fences of fields 

 beautifies a landscape, and furnishes a beneficial amount of shade 

 to stock, is readily admitted, but the desirable limit is far 

 exceeded when, as is often the case, one finds trees standing in 

 almost unbroken rows, with a gappy hedge underneath, and 

 deficient crops in their neighbourhood. 



The sylvicultural treatment of the oak, and, subsequently, of 

 the beech and other forest tree?, is discussed in what one may 

 call a popular, though thoroughly sound and scientific fashion. 

 The author does well to emphasise the point that it is nothing- 

 unusual for a land-owner to expect a woodman, getting a pound 

 per week or less, to administer plantations having a capital value 

 of .£30,000 or more. Fortunately, the proprietors of landed 

 estates are now realising that there are more opportunities for 

 the profitable utilisation of land under wood than they had 

 hitherto imagined, and already some thousands of acres, both in 

 England and Scotland, have been surveyed by competent experts, 

 and pub under a well - conceived working plan. This is a 

 development that is sure to spread, and those who are the first 

 to embrace the new principles will be the first to reap the 

 advantages. Education in forestry has been slowly but surely 

 spreading in this country since lectures were started in Edinburgh 

 in 1889. A great impetus was given to scientific progress by the 



