io Studies in Forestry [CHAP. i. 



on July 26, 1889, it appears that the total area classifiable 

 legally as Crown forests is only 109,139 acres, of which merely 

 57,304 acres are actually under timber crops, i.e. only 2 % of 

 our three million acres of woodlands are owned by the State, 

 whilst 98 % belong to private landowners. Comparatively 

 slight though this Crown ownership may appear in amount, 

 yet 57,304 acres, or ninety square miles, represent a very 

 considerable monetary capital invested in soil and timber 

 crops. 



Over two hundred years ago John Evelyn, whose classic 

 work Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees, was read by him 

 before the Royal Society of London in 1664, bemoaned the great 

 decadence and destruction of the woodlands, or as he termed 

 it ' the impolitic diminution of our timber] that had been handed 

 down to us from primeval times, and ' which our more prudent 

 ancestors left standing for the ornament and service of their country? 

 But he probably little suspected that the very same causes, 

 which had led to what he considered excessive clearance of 

 the remnants of the aboriginal forests, would ultimately lead to 

 their being partially restored by re-planting, that is to say, the 

 desire to get the best possible monetary returns from the soil. 



The effect of the gradual depression of agriculture that has 

 been making itself felt during the last fifteen to seventeen 

 years has, of course, first affected the area under the plough. 

 As Major Craigie remarks (Agricultural Returns for 1891, 

 p. io) : 



' Turning to the details of the cultivated area, it is again necessary to 

 note the remarkable changes which have been taking place in the ratio 

 of arable to pasture land in Great Britain. The two great divisions of 

 arable and pasture now claim, for the first time, an almost exactly equal share 

 of the surface. Twenty years ago the arable land was to the grass as 3 is to 2. 

 It exceeded by 6,000,000 acres the surface of permanent grass, there 

 being 18,403,000 acres returned as arable to 12,435,000 acres of pasture.' 



Again, in the Returns for 1892 (pp. io, u, 21) he has the 

 same sad tale to tell : 



