xxviii INTRODUCTION 



control, for afforestation upon terms more advantageous to the 

 present proprietors pecuniarily, and as a municipal and national 

 duty to certain classes of labour as an immediate and practicable 

 source of employment as well as in the near future development 

 of national wealth, whether as rural industries, or water, or even 

 aesthetic reasons, combined with timber production. 



Foresty, however, may^ only be successfully practised where the 

 conditions are reciprocal as between sporting and even fishing. 

 Game, ground and winged, affording sport and food, and also vermin, 

 ground and winged, affording sport in pursuing or capturing without 

 value other than skins, furs, or feathers, must not be unduly numer- 

 ous on the one hand, or tolerated on the other hand so as to pre- 

 judice the growth of the trees. 



FARMING, or the art of cultivating the soil in such a 

 manner as to cause it to produce, in the open field, crops of such 

 plants as are useful to man and to the domesticated animals, 

 and including the breeding and rearing of these animals, is the 

 basis of all other arts, and in all countries coeval with the dawn 

 of civilization. It is the most universal and the most ancient of the 

 arts, and employs a large part of the population of almost every 

 civilized community. The Egyptians, Chaldeans and Chinese held 

 it in high estimation, also the Japanese and Phoenicians. The 

 ancient Greeks practised farming, and Hesiod, supposed to have 

 lived about 735 B.C., wrote a poem on agriculture, entitled " Works 

 and Days." The Carthaginians carried the art of agriculture to 

 a higher degree than other nations, their contemporaries. Mago, 

 one of their famous generals, wrote no less than twenty-eight books 

 on agricultural topics, which, according to Columella, were trans- 

 lated into Latin by an express decree of the Roman Senate. 



The ancient Romans venerated the plough, and in the earliest 

 and purest times of the republic, the greatest praise was given to an 

 industrious husbandman, whose farm management was in general 

 based upon thorough tillage, judicious manuring, rotation of crops, 

 attention to cultural details, adaptation to soil and circumstances, 

 conservation of natural aids and decimation of enemies. 



When the conquering arms of Rome reached the British Islands 

 they found the barbarous inhabitants existing chiefly upon the 

 produce of their herds and of the chase, the inland inhabitants, 

 descended from the Cimbri, lived in straw-thatched cottages, and 

 knew nothing of husbandry they tilled no ground and sowed no 

 corn, but subsisted for the most part on milk and flesh. But those 

 who dwelt near the coast, and particularly on that part of it now 

 known as Kent, Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, were acquainted with 

 the treasures of the soil. Tacitus, referring to this part of Great 

 Britain, says : '" The soil is such that, except the olive and the 

 vine, and other vegetables usually raised in hotter climes, it really 



