THE NEW FORESTRY. 211 



been the case hitherto, although the mismanagement has not 

 been due so much to the neglect of owners themselves as to 

 the ignorance of those who professed to understand the 

 business and who advised them. The only men fitted to 

 engage in scientific forestry at present are those who have 

 had a gardener's education to begin with. That, the ordinary 

 woodman of the past has seldom had. It might have been 

 supposed that two professions so closely connected as forestry 

 and gardening would have progressed hand-in-hand. But 

 they have not done so, for horticulture has gone ahead, while 

 forestry has almost stood still. On many estates not a few 

 of the more important duties of the forester have devolved 

 upon the gardener, and it is an indisputable fact that with the 

 exception of some recent works nearly all that has been 

 written on forestry and allied subjects has been written by 

 gardeners, while the horticultural press has served as the 

 organ of forestry, every attempt of the latter to establish a 

 paper of its own having failed from want of support from 

 owners of woods and their foresters. Arboricultural 

 societies have, as is well known, been next to impotent institu- 

 tions, and have had little or no hand in the present revival of 

 forestry, which originated from outside sources, including the 

 horticultural and agricultural press. The Continental system 

 of forestry, now recommended for adoption in this country, 

 was in operation long before our arboricultural societies were 

 founded has been in force for over a quarter-of-a-century in 

 our Indian forests ; and our arboricultural societies, with 

 means and influence at their disposal, might have been 

 expected to introduce an improved system at home to which 

 general practice might conform, but their " transactions " show 

 few or no signs of their having ever realised the necessity of 

 moving in a practical direction, or of having had any real 

 acquaintance with any other system of forestry than that 

 practised by the mistaken followers of Brown, among whom 

 their awards and commendations have been somewhat pro- 

 miscuously distributed from time to time. And this has 

 been going on while a system of forestry, reduced almost to 

 an exact science, has been in operation at our door, so to 

 speak, and the products of which have been a constantly 

 standing evidence of our own mistaken practice. 



This is not the first time it has been pointed out that a 

 mere labourer's experience in woods for a few years is insuffi- 

 cient to qualify a man to have charge of woods and plantations 

 on estates. The young intending forester should serve a 



