176 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



treated as economic forests should be. Besides, most of the Crown 

 woods are much burdened with communal rights, tenaciously held 

 to by the people. They yield a very low return, and for the 

 purpose of demonstrating the results of forestry work are not at 

 all suitable. 



In the country, sylviculture plays an exceedingly small part. 

 The facilities for forestry instruction are very incomplete, and 

 the few landowners who desire to see their woods better managed 

 have neither the necessary knowledge themselves, nor are they in 

 the position to procure capable wood managers. 



The strongest factor, however, that is working against forestry 

 is the game interest. It is well known how great the desire for 

 sport in Britain is : I would only remark here that the love of shoot- 

 ing has outgrown the love of the chase. The great object is the 

 filling of the game-bag — so many head of game. On this account, 

 those animals are preferred which may be killed in great numbers 

 in a very short time — pheasants, grouse, and rabbits. For the rais- 

 ing of these, large, close woods are not required, indeed, they are 

 scarcely consistent with the production of game in large numbers. 

 Large tracts of waste land remain without forest out of considera- 

 tion for the grouse. Red deer in Britain are not present in the 

 same quantity as in Germany, owing to the well wooded 

 state of the latter country. But on the great unpeopled areas of 

 heather moor in Scotland, where occasional poor remnants of 

 former forests exist, deer find the necessary food and quietude. 

 The development of their antlers remains, of course, far behind 

 that of German stags from the forests, but then it is possible in a 

 few weeks to shoot a hundred liead! 



The extent to which consideration is given to sport was shown 

 by a landowner in the south-west of England. I asked him why, 

 having a great many isolated patches of wood, he did not bring 

 these together by afforestation into one proper forest. His reply 

 was that his neighbours would be too much incensed at the spoiling 

 of the fox hunt which such action would entail. 



The landowners are either wealthy enough to make use of their 

 game facilities themselves, and renounce any income from forestry, 

 or they let the shootings at such enormous prices that it appears 

 to them that timber crops could not bring more. This alone would 

 account for the want of interest taken in forestry. The woods 

 should, properly speaking, be called only game-coverts. 



It has already been remarked that the young woods are much too 

 heavily thinned. Very frequently this is done simply at the wish 



