158 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



All the expenses of auction sales are avoided, and also the 

 temptation to obtain high prices by over-cutting, or undue 

 selection of the best timber. The top prices of the saleroom 

 may not be reached, but, on the other hand, the low prices of 

 inferior lots (which auctioneers are careful not to mention) 

 are rarely if ever touched, and the owner knows beforehand 

 what he is getting for his timber. As already hinted, the 

 success of this method of selling depends a good deal upon 

 the honesty of both the timber merchant and forester, or 

 whoever measures for the owner. A certain amount of dis- 

 honesty may be practised by a certain class of men ; but if 

 proprietors generally paid more attention to the status and 

 reputation of the timber merchant they dealt with and the 

 forester they employed, and were less tempted by high prices 

 without any obvious reason for their being given, and cheap 

 but incompetent men, dishonesty on either side would soon 

 be a thing of the past. In these days of keen competition 

 timber merchants cannot afford to buy rashly where they 

 pay promptly, and a rash purchaser is often a slow payer, 

 or otherwise he gets an advantage in some way or another 

 which does not appear on the surface. On the other hand, 

 it often happens that a merchant will pay the outside value 

 for timber sold to him privately in order to make sure of 

 getting it, and save the bother of buying in small lots or at 

 a greater distance. 



As a general principle of successful timber selling, it may 

 be said that the encouragement of good local and regular 

 buyers, as far as possible, is sound policy. It is upon them 

 that the stability and steadiness of the market depends, and 

 they can make use of inferior material which a man from a 

 distance would not trouble about. To deprive these buyers 

 of their regular supply for a slightly higher price from an 

 outsider and temporary purchaser, does more than anything 

 else to spoil the timber sales on an estate, and the quicker 

 this principle is recognised the better for both the timber 

 grower and merchant. 



