34 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



competent forester, while agents who are thoroughly con- 

 versant with all branches of estate work are few and far 

 between. The difference between the nett returns from a 

 small area under good and bad management is probably not 

 great, while it takes many years to improve the returns from 

 neglected woodlands. Under such circumstances the pro- 

 prietor rarely takes the trouble to alter existing matters, and 

 the woods are mismanaged until they are converted into 

 practically a wooded waste, and then left entirely as game 

 cover. 



Another reason which often accounts for small woods 

 not showing much profit, is the fact that they usually occupy 

 the poorest ground that can be found round about them. 

 This is, no doubt, as it should be, for the chief function of 

 forestry is to utilise ground which cannot be profitably grazed 

 or cultivated, and if fencing could be dispensed with many 

 poor patches of ground might be planted up with advantage. 

 But when plantations occupy the face of steep banks, patches 

 of boggy ground which require a good deal of drainage, the 

 summits of hills, or the bottoms and sides of gullies and 

 ravines from which it is difficult to remove the timber, it is 

 obvious that profit is not easily obtained from them. The 

 growth of timber on banks and hilltops is not so rapid as in 

 a large plantation which takes in a considerable portion of 

 fairly good ground, and from the interior of which the wind 

 is excluded, and the soil preserved from loss of leaves and 

 moisture. The cost of making and keeping clean drains 

 throughout a rotation of eighty or a hundred years amounts 

 to a considerable sum per acre, and is much higher than it 

 would be in a plantation on average ground. The removal 

 of small lots of timber from ravines is always a factor in 

 reducing the price per foot obtained for it, owing to the 

 extra trouble and cost involved, while small wood and fagots 

 in such situations are often unsaleable. 



The indifferent results of English forestry are due to 

 many causes, but the principal one is the absence of any 

 definite objective in the management of woodlands. Woods 

 suffer considerably from being parts of estates, and not 

 estates in themselves, and therefore have frequently to 

 become subservient to other estate departments which, in 



