METHODS AND TRACTICE 149 



improperly or carelessly carried out, or rendered abortive 

 by incidental circumstances. Whether broad-leaved or 

 coniferous woods, worked on long or short rotations are 

 considered, the difference is quite as marked, and personal 

 observation renders the disparity between the possible 

 and actual yield in commercial timber even more con- 

 spicuous than figures and quotations. Compare a wood 

 consisting of short- boled, heavily crowned trees, scattered 

 over a surface covered with bracken, brambles, grass, or 

 heather, with a crop of tall branchless stems rising from a 

 leaf-strewn floor absolutely free from all forms of herbage. 

 Not only is the former deficient in cubic contents, so far 

 as mere wood is concerned, but the proportion of waste 

 or firewood to commercial timber in it is from three to 

 four times as great as that found in the latter. The 

 difference is quite as great as may be seen in two wheat 

 crops, the one thick, even, and level as the surface of a 

 lake, and the other full of poppies, thistles, and bindweed, 

 the result of bad cultivation and dirty ground. 



To what, it may be asked, is this difference- due ? Is it 

 to indifference on the part of owners of woods, and ignor- 

 ance on the part of their foresters, or to objects being 

 kept in view other than the production of timber ? That 

 all three of these causes have had something to do with 

 the unsatisfactory features alluded to is well knoAvn, and 

 fully described in another work,^ but there are other 

 reasons which may be found upon a careful scrutiny 

 of the conditions under which plantations are raised, 

 either on bare ground or cleared woodland. 



In the first place, it must be admitted that thin or 

 badly grown woods may arise from the inroads of ground 

 game, wind, or the result of deliberate thinning during 

 the first twenty or thirty years, and there are few estates 

 throughout the country which do not show examples of 



^ Enrjlish Estate Forestry. 



