NA rURE 



19: 



THURSDAY, JUNE 28, 1894. 



STUDIES IN FORESTRY. 

 ' Studies in Forestry. A Short Course of Lectures on 

 ' Silviculture, delivered at the Botanic Garden, Oxford, 

 1S93, by John Nisbet, D.Oec. (Oxford: Clarendon 

 I'ress, 1894.) 



DR. NISBET is an officer of the Indian forest depart- 

 ment, specially trained in forestry in Germany, 

 ind after spending a number of years in the charge of 

 j;xtensive forests in Burma, he was, a year or two ago, 

 jermitted by the Secretary of State for India to make a 

 "urther study of German forestry in Bavaria. Whilst in 

 Bavaria he wrote six useful essays on forest subjects, 

 .vhich have been published by order of the Secretary of 

 State for India, and they are now being circulated to 

 subscribers to the Indian Forester, a monthly magazine 

 published in Dehra Dun, where Dr. Nisbet is now 

 [serving as deputy director of the Indian Forest School. 

 I The author states in his preface that he has, with the 

 |:onsent of the Secretary of State, embodied much of 

 |:he matter in these essays in the " Studies in Forestry," 

 ind much of the remainder occurs in Dr. Nisbet's 

 ' British Woodlands," or in his translation of a German 

 ivork on forest protection. 



Much of the matter contained in the " Studies" will 

 jilso be found in Dr. Schlich's " Manual of Forestry," 

 l/ols. i. and ii., which works are largely founded on the 

 j;ame authorities as those used by Dr. Nisbet, whose 

 '.vork must have been greatly simplified by having ready 

 .0 hand Dr. .Schlich's well-chosen English equivalents of 

 he various German technical forest terms. 



.\s all the books just referred to have been already 

 reviewed in Nature, a detailed notice of the present 

 work is hardly called for, though it will prove instructive 

 to those who have not seen the former books, if they 

 allow for the author's want of practical experience in the 

 British Isles, where forestry is under different climatic 

 conditions to those prevailing in Germany. The first 

 chapter of tlie book, however, on " Forestry in Britain," 

 is very forcibly and well written, and contains much 

 suggestive matter to which the attention of everyone 

 interested in forestry should be drawn. 



Taking the area of British forests roundly at 3,000,000 

 acres, and allowing ninety years as their average rota- 

 tion, their cost of production is estimated as equivalent 

 to:— 



(Annual rental of 3,000,000 acres + cost of forming, or 

 regeneratmg them) x i 'o ;- ';" ; 



where r is the rate of interest at which a forest owner 

 is content to lock up his capital of soil and growing 

 stock. 



This rate he, perhaps erroneously, urges should be 

 higher than that used in agriculture, on account of the 

 greater risk incurred by forests from storms, insects, fire, 

 &c. Scotch owners who have suffered from the hurri- 

 cane last December, which blew down il million trees 

 in Perthshire and Forfarshire, will be disposed to agree 

 with the author here ; but the fact is that all these risks 

 would be very greatly reduced if British forests were 

 properly managed so as to withstand storms and the 

 NO. 1287, VOL. 50] 



other dangers referred to. However, owing to the 

 appreciation of broad acres, Dr. Nisbet puts the rate of 

 interest at 2I per cent., that of funded property, which is 

 probably the correct figure after all. Placing therefore 

 the average rental of woodland at jj. an acre, and the 

 cost of formation at £2, that of planting Scotch pine 

 in Perthshire ; he arrives at the following figures : — 

 (3,000,000 X £--^s!) I '025 = ^20,500,000 nearly, which 

 is the cost of production of our woodlands, the 

 prospective value of the mature crop being much 

 greater. On comparison with results in Germany, and 

 assuming that our forests are as well managed as 

 German forests, which is at present far from being the 

 case, they should yield an annual revenue of /^2,ooo,ooo, 

 or at 25 years' purchase be worth ;{^ 50,000,000. Forty 

 years' purchase and /^8o,ooo,ooo would, however, be the 

 correct figure at i\ per cent. 



After this estimate comes a reference to the value of 

 our timber imports from Northern Europe, which in 1S92 

 was^g, 207,905, and the fact, to which Dr. .Schlich in 1890 

 first drew public attention, that all this material might be 

 produced on waste land in the British Isles, and em- 

 ployment thus provided for several hundred thousand 

 people. 



The rapidly approaching exhaustion of the North 

 American forests is also referred to ; and considering that 

 the United States is now importing annually enormous 

 quantities of timber from the Dominion of Canada, and 

 that the Canadian forests are being worked in the same 

 destructive manner as in the United States, it is surely 

 time for Canadian legislators to attend to the formation 

 of large State timber reserves, and provide for the educa- 

 tion of a trained forest staff to look after them. Quis 

 ciistodiet ipsos ctistodes ? the negligence shown by the 

 Canadian Executive in this respect looks as if the lumber 

 trade was more attractive than attention to the future 

 welfare of the country. .\ reference to the latest number 

 of the Garden and Forest shows thit the United States 

 Government has done nothing yet to protect and manage 

 the vast tracts of forest which there, at any rate, have 

 been for the present saved from alienation as State 

 property. One of the strongest reasons in favour of our 

 establishing national instruction in forestry on a proper 

 scale, and bringing our own Crown forests into a high 

 state of production, is the example it would set to our 

 colonists, and the chances that more of them might 

 come here to study forestry, as they do at present to 

 study engineering, law, and the arts. 



Dr. Nisbet refers in hard but not undeserved terms to 

 the results of the Parliamentary Committees on Forestry, 

 remarking that the solemn farce of appointing a Com- 

 mittee, and then letting the question slide, has twice been 

 played with regard to forestry in Britain. The only 

 results from the Committee of 1887 have been that the 

 Treasury pays ^100 a year to a lecturer on forestry at 

 Edinburgh University, and .^250 (half the salary of the 

 professor of agriculture and forestry) at Newcastle, also 

 j^i50 each to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh 

 and the Glasgow Technical Institute for free classes to 

 foresters and gardeners. 



The second Committee of 18S9, to inquire into the ad- 

 ministration of the Crown forests, came to the conclusion 

 that they were being carefully administered, which does 



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