BRITISH FORESTRY, PAST AND FUTURE 3 



time of thinning and felling, have all been regulated more 

 or less in the interests of game. All kinds of wild animals 

 prefer an open type of woodland, where the trees have 

 low-reaching branches, and where sunny spots are frequent. 

 Moreover, they prefer a hundred acres in ten patches rather 

 than in one, and none knows better than the game-keeper 

 how this kind of subdivision helps to fill the bag, and there- 

 fore to please his master. But open woods are quite incom- 

 patible with the production of either quantity or quality 

 in timber. Moreover, game, and especially ground game, 

 does not need to be very abundant to make natural re- 

 generation impossible, and this method of renewal of a 

 woodland plays an important part in rational forest manage- 

 ment. Apart, however, from this aspect of the case, rabbits 

 and hares are most destructive to young trees, and will soon 

 upset the best-laid schemes, or, alternatively, render neces- 

 sary a heavy outlay on protective measures, and it is not to 

 be forgotten that 2 per acre spent on netting means, at 

 4 per cent., a charge against the woods at the end of eighty 

 years of 46. 



British silviculture has also suffered in the past from a 

 desire to add interest and variety to woodlands by mixing 

 together a large number of species. Within limits, but 

 these limits are very narrow, it is often desirable to plant 

 two or more species on a given area, but whenever one gets 

 beyond two, or at most three species, one adds greatly 

 to the difficulties and cost of management. In any case, 

 to be successful a mixture must be composed on definite 

 principles one species, deep-rooted, to protect the other 

 against gales, or one, a shade-bearer, to conserve the factors 

 of fertility for the benefit of its light-crowned associate 

 but the only principle that can be traced in the mixtures of 

 last century is the principle of variety. 



Other factors tending to make British forestry unpro- 

 fitable in the past were the smallness and irregularity of the 

 supplies of timber, which tmis drove even local builders 

 to imported material, till home-grown wood ceased to count 



