58 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



CHAPTER IV. 

 WORKING FORESTRY PLANS. 



Allotment of the Wooded Area. Period of Rotation. -Choice of Species. Cul- 

 tural Methods. General Routine of Management. Forestry Book-keeping. 



BY working plans is meant the general scheme of manage- 

 ment throughout all the woods on an estate. Wherever a 

 forester and a working staff are employed, working plans are 

 a necessity, although they are rarely found on estates, the work 

 being usually carried on in an irregular fashion from year to 

 year, the forester being left too much to his own resources. 

 Good working plans provide a safe guide to both the proprietor 

 and his agents, make the work of management easier and 

 cheaper, and promote order in every department. The work 

 may not go on with the same regularity in the woods every 

 year, but it can be taken up, according to the plan, where it 

 was left off, and should even a change of foresters occur, the 

 management can still go on the same lines as before. Well- 

 considered forestry plans should not contemplate nor permit 

 any material change of management or practice with a change 

 of foresters or whims of an untried man, a thing which has 

 often happened on estates to the disadvantage of the woods 

 where no plan of work existed. It should be clearly under- 

 stood that in the new forestry here advocated there is little 

 that the usual practical training of the Scotch or English 

 forester, combined with a little knowledge of vegetable 

 physiology, should not fit him to carry out perfectly well. He 

 should soon master the general principles on which any system 

 of culture is based, and need only conform to the working 

 plans. On the Continent, and particularly in Germany, the 

 first duty of the forest officer in any section is to master the 

 system that controls all important^ operations connected with 

 his charge. Writers on the German forestry devote much 

 attention to the working plans, going into the subject on a far 

 more comprehensive scale and minute way than it is proposed 

 to do in this work, where woods of very limited extent, com- 

 pared to Continental forests, are dealt with, and the working 

 plans modified accordingly. Woodlands in Britain have 

 almost everywhere been so injudiciously planted, and so 

 severely and irregularly thinned, tfiat on almost all private 

 estates there is sufficient scope for planting and regeneration, 

 without taking up any fresh land ; and in many cases the 

 restoration of existing woods to the full-crop condition would 

 provide owners with quantities of timber for sale in simply 



