30 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



doubt the majority of English landowners regard their woods 

 in much the same light as the Norman baron or earl regarded 

 his chase, or the king his forest, namely, as so much ground 

 set apart for sport. If this ground yielded something more 

 in the shape of timber or firewood, so much the better for the 

 lord of the manor, and in the same way the English land- 

 owner of to-day looks upon any return in timber from his 

 plantations as a perquisite which he has done nothing to 

 secure, and which is therefore more or less nett profit. To 

 plant timber trees with any definite idea of obtaining a 

 higher rent from the ground, or of increasing the capital 

 value of the estate, is a step which the average landed 

 proprietor very seldom takes, owing to the long length of 

 time which must elapse before any scheme of this kind can 

 reach maturity. The consequence is, therefore, that English 

 forestry has developed into a more or less haphazard com- 

 bination of planting, thinning, and felling ; or, in other words, 

 into a mixture of sylviculture, arboriculture, and landscape 

 gardening, as already said. 



Sylviculture in English forestry is usually confined to 

 young plantations under fifty years of age, or to groups of 

 greater or less extent in older woods. It is very rare to 

 find it practised over a large area or throughout the life of 

 the wood, and in many cases where an exhibition of it may 

 be found, it is as often as not due to neglect or accidental 

 causes unconnected with any system of organised manage- 

 ment. Generally speaking, English plantations are not 

 formed on strictly sylvicultural lines to begin with. The 

 general idea which permeates planting operations is that of 

 covering the ground with trees which will ultimately develop 

 into a wood. The size or quality of the timber this wood 

 will produce, and the period at which it will probably arrive 

 at maturity, are regarded as remote contingencies, and are 

 seldom taken into account when deciding on the species to 

 be planted and the subsequent operations of thinning. 



For the first ten or twenty years after planting, English 

 plantations are usually left pretty much to themselves. In 

 the first place, the thinnings are of little value, the planta- 

 tions themselves are usually available for game cover, and 

 their ornamental features have not yet had time to develop 



