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PREPARING WORKING-PLANS FOR BRITISH WOODLANDS. 33 
This outdoor work is indispensable. No matter how well 
any agent may know the woods, for the purposes of framing a 
working-plan notes made actually in the woods, with the given 
conditions straight in front of him, are far more accurate and 
far more valuable than jottings made in office or in his study. 
The former are precise and reliable, the latter never can carry 
the same weight even to the person who has noted them down. 
This sort of crop-description, and the notes about the future 
treatment that seems advisable, can best be done by the agent 
and the forester working in the mornings, because one gets very 
tired of this kind of thing if one is at it all day long, and 
work after lunch (be this ever so frugal) is never so good 
as in the forepart of the day, while one is still fresh and 
unfagged. 
There is, however, another side to the question. I have said 
that the agent is certainly the man who should be best qualified 
to do this particular branch of work on the estate entrusted to 
him. But has the land-agent usually had a thorough training 
in practical work of this specific kind? I will not risk making 
any further remark on this point than merely to state that those 
agents whom I happen to know intimately do not profess to be 
anything like so well up in this branch of estate management 
as in most others. Of course “forestry” forms a part in the 
curriculum of every agricultural college nowadays, and an 
examination in it is usually passed before a student obtains 
a B.Sc. degree in agriculture. at any university, or the diploma 
of the Surveyors’ Institution; but there is a vast difference 
between scoring a pass under such tests and feeling thoroughly 
at home in practical forestry. And this is all the more the 
case, seeing that British forestry, as practised on private estates 
throughout England, is something entirely different from sylvi- 
culture or timber-growing on an extensive scale, as practised on 
the Continent. This continental or sylvicultural method is what 
is generally taught in our schools and colleges, and it has 
recently been initiated in the Forest of Dean. But it must be 
recollected that this is probably by very far the largest block 
of woodland in the United Kingdom; and it also happens to 
be a Crown appanage, and is therefore not affected by any of 
the peculiarities and disadvantages to which private properties 
are subjected with regard to the growth, utilisation, and 
VOL. XX. PART I. c 
