viii PREFACE 



observations made here, and also during fifteen years' 

 active service in the teak forests of tropical Burma. 



The works which have been chiefly utilised in the 

 compilation are : 



Burckhardt's Sden und Pflanzen, 5th Edit.. 1880. 

 Ney's . . . Lehre vom Waldbau, 1885. 

 Gayer 's . . Waldbaii, 3rd Edit., 1889. 



Numerous other works have been consulted and 

 utilised, and wherever it has seemed desirable to quote 

 the authority for any assertion, this has been done in a 

 footnote. 



Whilst embodying the principles of sylviculture, it 

 has been the author's care to omit any lengthened or 

 unnecessary details as to the practical operations 

 of sowing and planting, which are as well under- 

 stood by arboriculturists in Britain as by sylviculturists 

 on the Continent. Throughout the English literature 

 on arboriculture many very valuable observations and 

 facts have been recorded in the works of Evelyn, 

 Loudon, Gilpin, Selby, Lindley, Monteith, Grigor, 

 Brown, Veitch, Curtis, Michie, &c., and in the Trans- 

 actions of the Highland and Agricultural, and the 

 Arboricultural Societies of Scotland. But they often fall 

 short of their full practical value sylviculturally, because 

 they have not usually been based on a systematic and 

 scientific knowledge of the fundamental principles 

 which ought to underlie all sylvicultural operations, 

 and which even on the Continent where throughout 

 the whole of the present century they have undoubtedly 

 been far ahead of us in forest science were not quite 

 consistently, scientifically, and logically explained 

 until the issue of the first edition of Gayer's great 

 work in 1880. 



