36 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



that the crop would be realised by the planter. The same 

 may happen again. Numbers of good examples of planting 

 for the distant future might be cited the Duke of Athol, for 

 example, in Scotland, and the Earls of Yarborough; in 

 Yorkshire the latter having planted during the last hundred 

 years some twenty millions of trees, according to an authorised 

 statement in the " Field " of December 3rd, 1898. Such pleas 

 will not, we think, interfere with good forestry, and those who 

 are under the delusion that the introduction of the German 

 forestry system into this country will banish beauty and 

 sentiment from the land, must be woefully ignorant of German 

 forests and that German forest lore and romance that has 

 tinged so much of the literature of the world. There is one 

 direction, however, in which German sentiment does not run, 

 and that is in extravagant veneration for very old and useless 

 dead trees such as encumber so many woods and parks in 

 Britain. They believe in live trees and plenty of them. They 

 do not excel in collections of relics like the Old Caledonian 

 Forest for example, or like Sherwood, nor do they pride them- 

 selves on parks of stag-headed oaks or other species, except on 

 a reasonable scale. Their rotation periods have long since 

 put an end to all that, and they point with pride instead to 

 the grand tracts of forest that clothe their mountains and 

 waste lands almost everywhere, and which have become of so 

 much importance to their country. 



It may be remarked here that since the subject of forestry 

 has been revived in this country it has often been asserted, 

 and with truth, that if our present system be wrong, Scottish 

 writers of forestry and Scottish foresters have been mainly 

 to blame, and that, after all, the most profitable woods are to 

 be found in England, where Scottish forestry practices have 

 obtruded least. Scottish forestry practice, it is now admitted, 

 has been a failure. So far as there has been what may be 

 called any system of forestry in Britain, it has been of Scottish 

 origin, been taught by Scottish foresters almost exclusively ; 

 and, in the belief that Scotch forestry was the best, foresters 

 of Scotch training have been generally employed on estates 

 in Great Britain and Ireland wherever the woods were impor- 

 tant enough to require the services of a head forester. In that 

 way forestry practice of a kind diametrically opposed to what 

 is now recognised as true sylviculture, or the profitable 

 culture of timber, has been spread throughout the country. 

 Foresters are wedded to this wrong system, and it is difficult 

 ' to get men at present who understand any other. The men 



