152 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
He concludes by recommending that the institution should be 
placed under a department of the Government, and managed by 
a resident director and consultative committee, which would com- 
prise, amongst others, the Council of this Society. 
While this essay does not break fresh ground, nor really 
greatly advance the subject of the creation of model forests, it 
has a good deal to recommend it. It provides a set of plans of 
buildings for a forest school and other offices that it is to be hoped 
will be wanted some day, it contains the detailed description of 
five Scottish properties containing over 80,000 acres which may 
be purchased at about £3 per acre, and it offers some useful 
suggestions regarding the administration of the institution For 
these reasons we think that this essay should be published, and 
the writer rewarded with a prize of Five Guineas 
No. 4, By “ Moon Raker.” 
This writer starts with an interesting sketch of the history and 
present position of Scottish forestry. He recognises the beginning 
of organised attention to forestry in the introduction and extensive 
cultivation of the larch by a Duke of Athole about the middle of 
last century, and he proceeds to show, and with manifest reason, 
that the acclimatisation of this tree in Britain has been by no 
means an unmixed benefit. The larch, more than any other 
forest tree of importance, is intolerant of crowding and shading, 
and planters soon found that early and frequent thinnings were 
an absolutely essential condition of its successful growth, 
Probably, without giving much thought to the subject, foresters 
concluded that the sylvicultural treatment best adapted for the 
larch would also be equally suitable for other trees, with the result 
that our home-grown wood is a drug in the market, woodlands 
are unprofitable, and forestry generally is a somewhat discredited 
industry. 
In endeavouring to place British forestry on a sounder basis, 
the essayist very wisely deprecates any drastic or sweeping reform 
to start with. While no one doubts that the so-called Continental 
system has reached an almost ideal state of perfection, it would 
be most unwise to clamour for the cut-and-dry importation of this 
system into Britain. Landowners have not to choose between 
this and that system, but have got to reckon with existing woods, 
mismanaged it may be in the past, and at present neither profit- 
