2 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



adopted and carry the foregoing suggestions into effect, it 

 being hardly worth the while of either going through an 

 elaborate schooling for what, on most estates, is but a com- 

 paratively small task the care of a few plantations of no great 

 extent. The author does not underrate the value of forestry 

 schools and education begun at the fountain head, but that is 

 a slow process when there is much work waiting to be done. 

 Gardening in this country has reached a higher development 

 than it has done anywhere else without any other school than 

 a thoroughly good and widely diffused horticultural press, 

 aided by horticultural societies, and handy practical books that 

 enable gardeners to set to work with confidence and at once ; 

 and forestry might be advanced by similar means, but foresters 

 and arboricultural societies have sadly failed to do for their 

 craft what gardeners have done for theirs. 



There is nothing, at any rate, to prevent any would-be 

 planter of trees from beginning, with the aid of a few simple 

 rules that can soon be mastered, to guide him. It is well 

 known what kind of trees thrive best in almost every part of 

 the three kingdoms, and there are few soils, however poor they 

 may be, in which some species will not thrive more or less suc- 

 cessfully if they are planted and tended on some definite and 

 intelligent plan. 



In our forestry of the past it is not the manner in which the 

 work has been executed with which fault is found, but the 

 system, which has been laid down at great length, and which 

 has been just as difficult to learn, in all its bearings, as any 

 other and better system. The work, with the aid of a few 

 simple rules and instructions, has been well enough carried out 

 by practical men who would be quite able to carry out another 

 system equally well with similar assistance. Books and trans- 

 lations on the Continental system of forestry, recently issued, 

 though good and suitable for students of forestry, are too 

 elaborate and diffuse for immediate practical use, and present 

 a syllabus to the working forester and his employer that 

 neither think it needful to master. The author's experience 

 is that neither owners of property nor their agents care to 

 master volumes on every department of an estate, and shorter 

 methods are preferred if something has to be left out. Nor 

 do scientifically conducted Continental forests give one the 

 impression, either, that the system of management is such a 

 complicated business as books on the subject might lead one to 

 suppose, although Continental forest officers are a much better 

 trained class of men than British foresters are, and more 



