216 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



advancing age and stronger demand for growing- 

 space, the capital value thus increased artificially 

 is gradually allowed to decrease again without 

 yielding any permanent advantage to the land- 

 owner. This seems quite self-evident, when one 

 comes to think the matter out. The only possible 

 explanation of the British method of * Arbori- 

 culture ' must therefore be found in the fact that 

 the vast majority of our woodlands are game 

 coverts and pleasure woods, and that their owners 

 do not care to treat them merely, or mainly, on a 

 commercial footing as crops of timber. Surely, 

 however, if waste lands can be shown to be 

 thus profitably productive of timber, our national 

 ' shop-keeping ' instincts, with which we have 

 ever been credited by more economical Conti- 

 nental countries, might also have full play even 

 without interfering at all with the existing game 

 preserves and ornamental woods in all parts of 

 these Islands. 



On the better classes of pine soil natural re- 

 generation can easily be effected. But this method 

 is on the whole unusual for pure crops of pine, 

 as the damage done to the young seedlings bv 

 overshadowing is not compensated by the in- 



