CHAPTER I 



HISTORY OF BRITISH WOODLANDS 



THE face of England has changed considerably 

 since the days when Julius Caesar described it 

 as " one horrible wood," and when his 

 soldiers had to hack their way from Deal to 

 London. Nearly all these primeval forests 

 that barred the march of the Roman soldiers 

 have disappeared. At that period and for 

 many centuries afterwards we had plenty of 

 timber and little use for it, a striking contrast 

 to to-day, when we are left with little timber 

 and such a demand that before the war our 

 bill for the wood we imported stood roughly 

 at 45,000,000 annually. War greatly in- 

 creased the demand, while submarines reduced 

 the supply, and as a result we were compelled 

 to fall back on our home-grown timber, only 

 to find that economic forestry was one of the 

 many home industries that we had neglected 



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