REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF BOOKS. 227 
essential requisites for normal conditions of growing stock. He 
considers the principles underlying the choice of sylvicultural 
treatment (whether highwoods, coppice, or copse), and also 
such practical matters as the selection of the kinds of trees to 
be grown as timber-crops, and the most profitable rotations. 
Full details are given of the different methods of fixing the 
annual falls, and protective and severance falls are explained. 
Dr Nisbet concludes a highly interesting chapter with some 
sensible suggestions as to the best method of management of 
British woodlands under existing conditions. 
The methods of measurement of timber-crops are fully de- 
scribed in Chapter II., measuring instruments are illustrated, and 
useful Yield and other tables from Continental sources are given. 
Chapter III. deals with the Formation of Working-Plans, and 
the subject is considered under five heads. 
1. General remarks concerning Working-Plans or Schemes 
of Management. 
. Data and Statistics requisite. 
3. The Preparation of the Scheme or Working-Plan. 
4. The Explanatory Report to accompany the Scheme of 
Management. 
5. Control and Revision of the Results of Working. 
The author shows that “The object of the Working-Plan is, 
so far as possible, to provide for the continuous yield of annual 
returns of about equal extent and value, and, so far as practic- 
able, from about equal areas;” and he points out at the same 
time that this ruling idea in the Working-Plan must be sub- 
ordinated to the first fundamental principle of forestry, namely, 
that the productivity of the soil must be maintained. 
Private owners of woodlands may remark, perhaps, that many 
proposals which the author puts on record as essential for the 
successful working of woodlands are, in the light of existing 
British conditions, mere counsels of perfection; but Dr Nisbet 
evidently quite realises that Britain is not yet ripe for adopting 
German methods of forestry ev 4/oc, and in framing this chapter 
on the Formation of Working-Plans, he endeavours to adapt 
the highly scientific methods of Germany to British conditions. 
In this he has attained to a very considerable measure of 
success, and this section of the book may well be recommended 
to the study of those having woods under their control. 
The chapter on the Valuation of Woodlands is a very good 
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