FORESTRY IN BRITAIN DURINC; THE LAST FIFTY YEARS. 23 



about the middle of last century. After about 1845, drainage 

 was better understood and practised, so that timber crops had a 

 fairer chance of doing well. The Highland and Agricultural 

 Society of Scotland did much to encourage Arboriculture, and a 

 further stimulus to Forestry was given in 1854 by the formation 

 of the (now Royal) Scottish Arboricultural Society for the 

 advancement of Forestry in Scotland. In England this lead 

 was not followed till 1881, when the English Arboricultural Society 

 was formed; and it was not till 1901 that the Irish Forestry 

 Society was established. For a full generation, however, these 

 two Scottish societies were the only bodies that continuously and 

 consistently urged the claims of Forestry to receive more atten- 

 tion than hitherto, and with an assiduity that now at length 

 seems to be achieving something like substantial progress. 



In 1855 a Quarterly Review article, entitled "The Forester," 

 reviewed the first and second reports of the Commissioners of 

 Woods and Forests under the new Act of 185 1, and several well- 

 known works then recently published. This article dealt with 

 planting for profit on waste lands, and in situations where 

 agricultural crops did not pay ; and it gave very sound advice 

 concerning soil and situation, drainage, enclosure, fencing, soil- 

 preparation, pit-planting, and notching, the number of plants per 

 acre, and the best time for planting. 



Though it contains much that is technically incorrect, yet its 

 main outlines are thoroughly practical ; and the article is just as 

 well worth reading now as it was fifty years ago. On all of 

 these important points much sound advice was given, while well- 

 considered and shrewd remarks were made on the tending of 

 plantations. It included instructions concerning the pruning of 

 hardwoods, with a view to correct the errors of injudicious 

 thinning, consequent on the erroneous ideas then prevailing as 

 the result of the old national system of Arboriculture having for 

 its main object the growth of branching oak timber for ship- 

 building, while it also advised that " in Fir plantations ... no 

 pruning should be allowed, as the operation injures both the 

 health of the individual and the quality of the wood." At that 

 time the ideas about thinning (and consequently about the 

 number of trees per acre allowed to remain for the mature 

 timber crop) were extravagant, the ordinary rule-of-thumb of the 

 forester being that the trees should stand at a distance from each 

 other equal to one-third of their height — that is to say, a wood 



