156 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
knowing how much of the income is made up of capital, and how 
much of interest thereon in the shape of the realised value of the 
total annual growth. Another and perhaps even greater evil which 
accompanies this spasmodic felling and lack of organisation, is one 
which most Scottish planters know to their sorrow. After a con- 
siderable outlay in planting and management, it is no uncommon 
thing for owners of promising young plantations to find the latter 
wrecked by one of those periodic gales to which our islands are 
liable. Plantations standing on thin soils will always be 
exposed to this danger; but there is little doubt that a proper 
distribution of age classes in a large plantation would greatly 
diminish, and in many cases altogether prevent, the bad efiects 
of these gales. 
To remedy the state of matters complained of above, systematic 
management is absolutely necessary, and this can only be attained 
by the adoption of an organised policy or plan of operations, which 
shall exist so long as the woodland area of an estate remains as 
such. Systems of management which change with each forester or 
proprietor can never produce satisfactory results, for in such changes 
the aims of the planter are lost sight of by the thinner, and the 
final cutting is effected quite independently of the relation borne 
by that particular unit to the woodland area as a whole. There 
are doubtless many difficulties in the way of introducing a uniform 
system of working the woods on an estate which would be accepted 
by all parties. If we could fix the normal proportion of woodlands 
on an estate, and induce proprietors to maintain that proportion, 
the advantages of organisation would be at once apparent. But 
with the vast extent of waste or semi-waste land which exists on 
most estates, any obstacle in the way of afforestation would be 
undesirable; and when the wooded area constantly varies, the 
determination of a normal stock is impossible. Under such 
circumstances, the application of correct principles of forest 
organisation to estate forestry must always be attended with 
considerable difficulty, until the country has developed the various 
methods of economical land utilisation which have been adopted 
with such success in one or two parts of the Continent. All we 
can do at present is to render our systems of sylviculture as perfect 
as existing conditions will permit, and trust to time and the 
development of economic laws to gradually raise Scottish forestry 
to a higher level as a national industry. 
As means to so desirable an end, steps which are now well known 
