NOTICES AND REVIEWS OF BOOKS. I05 



The fault of the work, a fault common to all small handbooks 

 endeavouring to cover several courses of instruction within the 

 short space of 300 pages, is that important and most interesting 

 portions of the subject have to be so abbreviated and condensed 

 as to require a considerable previous knowledge of the subject 

 to render their perusal of advantage to the reader. In the 

 present case, for instance, the important branch of forestry known 

 as silviculture has to be curtailed into 85 pages. Of course 

 the author is inevitably driven to this, and it will in nowise 

 affect those who have the advantage of being Dr Nisbet's 

 students ; for his lectures doubtless amplify where necessary 

 the context of his book. With this criticism we have only good 

 to record of this excellent little handbook. 



The author commences with a brief enumeration of the 

 trees used in silviculture in Britain, and describes the chief 

 botanical characteristics both of hardwoods and conifers. Dr 

 Nisbet then proceeds to give the reader an interesting short 

 historical account of the progress of arboriculture in Britain. 

 He shows how a serious want of timber was making itself felt 

 even as early as 1543, in which year a Statute of Woods was 

 passed which decreed that all woods in England should be closed 

 for 4, 6 or 7 years after each fall of the coppice at under 14, 14 to 

 24, and over 24 years' rotation, respectively, and that at least 12 

 standards per acre should be stored or left to grow into timber. 

 The enforcement of this and similar modified Acts of Parliament 

 practically introduced a definite national system of arboriculture, 

 i.e. coppice-with-standards, into the country. Under this system 

 the standards were grown wide apart, and therefore were of 

 short height-growth and branched low, the object desired being to 

 produce great branches and big crooks and curved timber suit- 

 able for shipbuilding. This system, lasting through centuries, 

 gradually gave rise to the fixed idea that it was necessary to 

 give each individual tree a great deal of room. The continuance 

 of this fixed idea in more recent times led to its application more 

 or less to timber-crops grown as high-woods, after the demand 

 for "kneed" timber had declined with the introduction of iron 

 into shipbuilding. Such woods were habitually over-thinned, 

 and the trees consequently branched low down instead of form- 

 ing long clean boles, as in the case when they are grown in 

 dense or normal woods. 



British forestry began to decline early in the nineteenth century 



