11 PREFACE. 



themselves undertaken the re-organization of woods on 

 private estates with the ordinary staff and means usually 

 provided, and so easily has the new system been put in 

 operation that some have said " the only change effected 

 has been to plant the right species thicker than formerly, 

 and suspend thinning," which expresses part of the truth, but 

 means more than such critics care to admit. 



It is seldom anything of importance is said or written 

 about forestry of which the text is not the millions of acres 

 of waste land in Scotland and Ireland that might be planted ; 

 but although that plea may appeal to the State, it does not 

 interest many owners of private estates whose woods demand 

 all their attention. The waste lands needing attention first 

 are the blank spaces in existing woods, and which, in the 

 majority of cases, are of greater extent than the ground 

 occupied by trees. The fences are there but the crops are 

 absent. 



According to present agricultural returns there are, 

 roughly speaking, nearly three million acres of woodlands in 

 Great Britain and Ireland. Taking into account the thinly 

 timbered woods of the south of England and the proportion 

 of inferior species planted everywhere, the value of the three 

 million acres may probably be about 70 or 80 million pounds. 

 That is rating them at about their present market value, at 

 any rate, as woods go in different parts of the kingdom, and 

 it is a value that ought to be, at least, quadrupled under a 

 better system. It represents the capital locked up in 

 existing thin woodlands, and to restore these to the full crop 

 condition would be an easier and a wiser thing to do than 

 taking up fresh areas in out-of-the-way regions so far at 

 least as private owners are concerned. 



