AFFORESTATION. 331 



the best government school that our Govern- 

 ment has aided is its own school in the Forest 

 of Dean, which is for the training of the young 

 craftsmen of our woods. 



Perhaps few people are competent to 

 realise the skilled work that the craftsman 

 of the woods undertakes. Not only is he 

 a worker in applied arts, but he is also an 

 imaginative artist. In the midst of a thicket 

 of bramble or of clean underwood he has, 

 when he strikes, to visualise possible rake 

 handles, hoe handles, sneads for scythes, shafts 

 for axes, hoops for barrels, slats for hurdles 

 and sheep-cribs, as well as bean sticks and pea 

 boughs, leaving what cannot be shaped for use 

 as faggots for burning in the baker's oven or 

 in the cottager's open fire-place. A blow 

 delivered in the wrong place may spoil the 

 economy of his craft. 



He has, too, to wield the long-handled 

 felling axe, to push the two - handled saw, 

 to drive in wedges, to rip off the integument 

 in great flakes with the punyard and the 

 spud. " Go out ripping and you will come 

 in ragged ; go into it ragged and you will 

 come out of it naked," is an apposite saying 

 among woodlanders. 



