336 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 



tracts, is perhaps that though the owners of traction 

 engines or road locomotives are liable for damage 

 caused to fields or plantations by fires ignited 

 through their sparks, yet railway companies (con- 

 sequent on a legal decision in 1894) have no such 

 liability at present. 



The weak points of British Forestry are now 

 much better known, and are more generally 

 acknowledged, than was the case but a few years 

 ago. And the best remedies are plain. These 

 consist in improved technical instruction, both 

 theoretical and practical, so as to provide well- 

 trained, skilful wood-managers and wood-reeves 

 for the better management of existing woodlands, 

 and in greater encouragement and assistance to 

 be given by the State to landowners than have yet 

 been extended to them, to induce them to form 

 plantations on poor land and ' waste ' tracts once 

 under woods. Given these, there can be little 

 doubt that the good prospects of the timber 

 market of the near future would soon lead to 

 considerable improvements in British Forestry, 

 without appreciably affecting the maintenance of 

 a reasonable head of game of all the better sorts 

 to satisfy the true sporting tastes of that best 

 of men, the English Country Gentleman. 



