NATURAL REPRODUCTION OF FORESTS. 37 
conducting the routine forest work, and especially is this the case 
where those in charge of the woods are often changed. The most 
essential work for the time being of the skilled forester is perhaps 
utterly neglected, which entails a heavy loss to the proprietor at 
a future period, although it cannot easily be detected at the time 
by the uninitiated. Or, it may be the persistent and careful 
experiments of the enthusiast that is thus negiected and thrown 
aside as worthless, before the fallacy or the practical soundness of 
the problem aimed at can be solved, and thus cause a serious loss 
of valuable knowledge to the profession. It is by the practical 
experiments carried out by enthusiasts that the medical profession 
has attained to such a high standard in the preservation of health 
and prevention of disease. And so it is with the forester, who, 
without the practical aid of experiments in many cases, may be 
compared to a captain without a chart sailing in strange seas. 
His being right or wrong is a mere chance, and he may be 
treating his subject the reverse of what Nature ordains, with 
results the most unsatisfactory. Let me quote the words of 
Professor Huxley. He says that “ignorance is visited as keen 
as wilful disobedience ; incapacity meets with the same punish- 
ment as crime. Nature’s discipline is not even a word and a 
blow, but the blow comes first without the word. It is left for 
us to find out why.” 
The woods and forests of this country may be designated as 
of two kinds: first, underwood or coppice, z.e., wood which is 
grown and cut at short periods of from 20 to 30 years, composed 
of deciduous trees, and which are reproduced by suckers from 
stools. The second may be called timber forests, 1.e., wood which 
is only intended to be cut at intervals of long periods, which may 
be reproduced naturally or artificially, and may be composed of 
evergreen or deciduous trees—conifers or hardwoods—which are 
grown for the purpose of yielding the heavy timber used in the 
various branches of manufactures and art. 
I shall confine my remarks at present to the second or timber 
forests. Various species of timber trees have different constitu- 
tional habits, and it will be necessary to set forth a few examples 
by way of illustration. We will first assume that a Scots fir 
wood is about ready to undergo a process of restoration, and that 
the process is intended to be brought about, if possible, by natural 
reproduction from seed. By this it may be taken for granted 
that the said forest or wood is ripe, or approaching maturity, from 
