INAUGURAL LECTURE IN THE COURSE OF FORESTRY. 407 



and practical edncation, these forests would have served, and 

 would still be serving, as models to which the owners of piivate 

 forests could at any time turn for information and instruction. 

 In this WAj state foi-ests exercise a powerful educational 

 influence upon a country ; the more powerful of course the more 

 numerous and equally distributed they are, and the better 

 managed. 



But besides being didactic as regards the details of forestry, 

 state forests, where they have long been carefully administered, 

 are able to exhibit a properly organised system. A proper forest 

 system should ensure a regular annual harvest of the various 

 classes of timber and other produce, and should, at the same time, 

 preserve the capital stock intact — that is to say, no more should 

 be annually withdrawn from a forest area than is annually pro- 

 duced. Where the state is the owner of the forests, it demands a 

 system or rotation which shall fulfil these conditions, otherwise, 

 in drawing up the Budget, no reliable forecast of the probable 

 revenue can be made. But in order to oi'ganise a comprehensive 

 system of management in a large forest area, about a century is 

 required ; therefore it is only the state which can successfully 

 inaugurate a system which cannot be in complete working 

 order until the end of that long period of time. Those who ai-e 

 appointed to carry out the details of the scheme inevitably change 

 frequently before the fulfilment is reached, but the state still 

 exists and guarantees the carrying out of the bi-oad principles of 

 the main scheme. 



In the case of private forests, in a country practically destitute 

 of state forests, a comprehensive system is hardly to be expected . 

 Here there are no forests to which private owners can turn for 

 guidance or for information as to what the final results of any 

 proposed system will be. The consequence is, that if systems are 

 tried at all it is in a tentative and nervous sort of way, a man 

 having but little faith in the success of his own scheme, for he 

 has no pi-ecedent to guide him. Then, again, a man may in- 

 augurate a system of management for his woodlands which is 

 founded upon thoroughly scientific and economic grounds : but 

 what hope is there that his successors will carry forwai'd the 

 work on the lines originally laid down 1 Each possessor is not 

 likely to be of exactly the same mind as his predecessor, or, if he 

 be, then a variety of circumstances may intervene to raise an 

 insuperable barrier to his good intentions. The result too often 



VOL. XII., PART III. 2 E 



