THE NEW FORESTRY. 37 



are good, but their practice is wrong, and is based upon an j 

 entire misconception of tree growth as far as the production 1 

 of timber is concerned.* 



The following table of planting and thinning, etc., was 

 published, as an example of good management, as late as the 

 end of 1899, in a magazine devoted to the landed interest, 

 by the head forester on a well-known ducal estate in England, 

 and a member of the Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society, 

 who claimed to have had a high-class Scotch training. The 

 table affords a good example of the wasteful and destructive 

 methods that have long been generally in operation and recom- 

 mended. It does not even profess to be based on intelligent 

 sylvicultural principles, takes no account of such important 

 factors as density, overhead canopy, height growth, or protec- 

 tion of the soil ; shows fewer trees per acre at the beginning 

 than a German crop has at the end of 20 years (see Chapter 

 XII.) a final crop 329 trees short of what is considered a 

 fair Continental crop of the same age, and a loss of from 6,000 

 to 10,000 cubic feet per acre under conditions quite as favour- 

 able as those in Germany, and in many cases more favourable. 

 Note the margin of difference in the number of trees and feet, 

 reckoning the 120 trees, final crop, in the table, as equal to 

 3,000 feet, or a little over. The crop does not come within 

 sight, so to speak, of what is regarded as an ordinary Conti- 

 nental crop, and such practice has often meant the loss of an 

 income on estates, and should open the eyes of owners of 

 woods in that direction. Look at the waste involved in the 

 extravagantly severe thinnings during the first 25 years, the 

 consequent loss of crop, and adverse influence on the trees left 

 by destroying the overhead canopy and exposing the soil, not 

 to speak of the cost of planting thousands of trees that were 

 never to serve any useful purpose in themselves or benefit the 

 trees left: 



* In his evidence before the Departmental Committee on British Forestry, 

 1903, the head forester to the Earl of Mansfield, at Scone, Perthshire, said that 

 "plenty of foresters in Scotland still advocated the Scotch system," and that 

 " It is undeniable that there has been and yet exists a general ignorance in the 

 profitable growing of timber crops, even in such fundamental points as the 

 following : To what extent draining is necessary for the varieties proposed 

 to be planted, what species to grow on various soils, etc. ; whether to plant 

 pure or mixed if pure, what variety and how close to plant ; if mixed, what 

 varieties and what proportions of varieties, when and how often to thin, and 

 when to realize the crop. It often occurs also that when the owner wishes to 

 sell his mature timber he runs a risk of not getting its full value, as 

 comparatively few foresters are reliable in the valuing of standing timber, 

 and it not unfrequently happens that only half the value is offered for a lot by 

 a timber merchant." 



