x PREFACE 



effect to, the more probable it is that fair returns 

 will be obtained from land not quite good enough for 

 agriculture. 



In an interesting article on "Woodlands" in the 

 Nineteenth Century for July 1891, page 33, Sir 

 Herbert Maxwell, Bart., says : 



" One chief hindrance to our woodlands being remunerative maybe 

 stated at once we are arboriculturists and sportsmen, not foresters. 

 A large portion of the land returned as woodland is really pleasure- 

 ground and game-cover. Thousands of landowners follow on a smaller 

 scale the example set by the State on a larger in the New Forest and 

 Windsor Forest. Mixed planting is generally practised, in sharp con- 

 trast to what Continental foresters call ' pure forest' that is, a woodland 

 composed of one species of tree. This is in itself a hindrance to profit- 

 able management, because pure forest is much more easily tended than 

 mixed plantation, an-i the timber is more readily marketable." 



This view is entirely wrong, and of itself shows the 

 urgent need for some properly qualified instruction in 

 forest science, when one of the more intelligent owners 

 of woodlands can hold and disseminate such incorrect 

 ideas concerning the true nature of forest growth, and 

 the natural requirements of the various species of our 

 forest trees. Here is what Professor Gayer of Munich, 

 the greatest living authority on sylviculture, says on 

 the subject at page 386 of the ZeitscJirift fiir Forst- 

 nnd Jagdwesen for June 1892 : 



< >ne can say that during the last thirty to forty years it has been a 

 consistently emphasised leading principle of the Bavarian State Forest 

 Department to recommend as much as possible the extension and main- 

 tenance of mixed forests in all localities in any way suitable for their growth ; 

 and the principle, too, has been acted on in many places. In many 

 other localities, however, and especially in the spruce tracts, mercantile 

 considerations gained influence and took precedence, and the thought 

 of a suitable admixture of species was to a certain extent pushed into 

 the background, rendering it now very difficult to effect with satisfactory 

 results a re-transformation to the former state of things. All the more 

 emphasis is consequently now being laid on the retention of mixed 

 growth, especially in regard to retaining it in all older crops which 

 are still classifiable as mixed forest, and endeavours are in general 

 being made to prepare the way for a return to mixed woods in all suit- 



