62 History of the English Landed Interest. 



keepers allowed the young trees to be eaten by rabbits pro- 

 pagated for tlieir own profits. 



But the necessity was too immediate for any such pro- 

 crastinating remedies. Save in the case of some half-dozen 

 great landowners, such as the Dukes of Devonshire, Norfolk, 

 Portland, and Newcastle, etc., no systematic plantation of 

 oak timber had taken place for sixty years ; while the enormous 

 price of oak bark, which had risen in 1813 from £5 to £20 per 

 ton, was inducing landed proprietors to cut down all the young 

 saplings they could lay their hands on. A heavy tax on the 

 importation of foreign timber, especially deal, encouraged the 

 plantation of the fir and larch, and operated as a bounty on 

 the consumption of British oak. With a duty on European 

 timber, which during the war had risen from 6^. Sc^. to 65s., it 

 was of no use for our Admiralty to look for shipbuilding ma- 

 terials anywhere but in the Colonies. Reduced to such straits, 

 they could luit long for the enemy to venture out of port in 

 order that they might refit their battered fleets by means of 

 captured prizes.^ 



It may well be believed that the public had begun to 

 recognise and appreciate the services of the forester, and that 

 admirable Society for the Encouragement of Arts, etc., about 

 to be frequently alluded to in these pages, offered, in the spring 

 of 1791,^ premiums and prizes for every branch of arboricul- 

 ture. These were a gold medal and silver medals for acorn 

 sowing, for raising oaks in long-standing woodlands, for infor- 

 mation on the habitat and cultivation of the oak ; and similar, 

 though less important, rewards for the arboriculture and ob- 

 servation of other forest trees. 



It was high time that some encouragement was bestowed 

 on the science. Arthur Young, who never allowed a piece 

 of ornamental planting to escape his favourable notice, eulo- 

 gises the many beautiful woodlands met with in his northern 

 tour,^ but describes the timber south of a line drawn from 



» The first report of the Commissioners of her Majesty's Woods and 

 Forests and Land Revenues, June 13th, 1812. Tide Quarterly Beview. 

 Art. 1, No. xix., 1817. 



^ Gent.\'> Mafj., 1791, p. 443. •* Six Months^ Tour, etc., 2JCissim. 



