326 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



enough to afforest their catchment areas. 

 State interference or State ownership in 

 relation to wood is nothing novel in Great 

 Britain or in most European countries. I 

 have instanced the case in Hungary, and then 

 there is the striking example in Saxony, which 

 owns over 428,000 acres of State forest yielding 

 a net return of over £l an acre, whilst in 

 England only 67,000 acres of woodlands belong 

 to the State, or 2j per cent, a percentage 

 which is smaller than in any other European 

 country. 



Yet in England we have traditionally 

 regarded our woods as something sacred which 

 needs special protective legislation. In 1543, 

 for instance, "The Statute of Woods" was 

 passed to prevent the owners of woods from 

 felling the standard timber trees in their copses 

 except under the observance of certain fixed 

 rules, and it compelled them to store young 

 standards of oak, or, failing that, of elm, ash, 

 asp, or of beech, which were then the most 

 valuable kinds of timber — oak for shipbuilding, 

 ash for agricultural implements and bows, 

 aspen for arrows, and beech for furniture. 

 Thus the previously existing copse wood 

 method of growing standard timber trees above 



