April 26, 1894] 



NA TURE 



603 



thrives, would, if the forest were rooted up and the soil 

 limed at considerable expense, only yield a rental of \2s. 

 an acre as farm-land. Evidently here we have a district 

 where forestry is more productive than agriculture, and 

 where planting might be extended ; and the same maybe 

 said of the large area of heather land above the Bagshot 

 Sands in Surrey, Berkshire, and Hampshire, which might 

 all be stocked with conifers were sensible measures 

 adopted to stop the progress of the annual heath fires. 



When it is remembered that we import 70,000 tons of 

 pit-props every year, chiefly from the cluster pine forests 

 near Bordeaux, and that in the Belgian Ardennes, at a 

 distance of 80 miles from the coal mines, 40- j ear old 

 Scotch pine, used for pit-wood, can be sold standing for 

 ^55 per acre, exclusive of the value of thinnings, which 

 would pay for the cost of producing and tending the 

 forests, and this means an annual profit of 165-. an acre, 

 including an allowance for compound interest at 3 per 

 cent., there can be no reason why we should not grow 

 our own pit-props on waste land unsuitable for agri- 

 culture. 



Many farms on heavy land are at present either going 

 out of cultivation or paying very badly, and as an example 

 of the successful forest treatment of similar land on the 

 London clay, the Princes Coverts, near Esher, in Surrey, 

 may be cited. 



Leopold of Saxe Coburg, the consort of our Princess 

 Charlotte, and afterwards King of the Belgians, about 

 seventy years ago united several small woodland areas, by 

 planting up the land of two farms, in which they were 

 situated, with hazel and ash coppice and oak standards. 

 The present extent of the coverts is 868 acres, and their 

 yield, after deducting all costs of management, amounts 

 to at least \bs. an acre per annum, and probably more ; 

 but Messrs. Clutton, the agents of the Crown lands, in 

 which these woods are at present included, might supply 

 the correct figures. The coppice is felled every ten years, 

 and yields supports for fruit and ornamental trees, 

 bean- and pea-sticks, clothes-props, kindling fuel, &c., 

 which are largely in demand for gardens, orchards, and 

 laundries around London ; while the oaks, which in 

 seventy years attain a girth of about five feet, are 

 readily sold standing at \s. 6d. and 2s. a cubic foot, 

 according to quality. 



Whilst, however, the work of planting up our waste 

 lands must necessarily be chiefly left to private agency, 

 the State should bring the Crown forests into a high 

 state of productiveness, and render them examples of 

 good forest management. Forestry is eminently a prac- 

 tical business, and when a landowner wishes to plant, he 

 should be able to see the ideal way of dealing with 

 different localities on economic principles in our Crown 

 forests. This at present is far from being the case. \'ery 

 large sums of public money were spent in planting up 

 the Crown forests in 1813-25, when there was a fear of 

 our running short of timber for the Navy. It is true that 

 our Navy now depends on teak and iron, rather than on 

 oak and pine ; but oak and pine are still valuable com- 

 modities, and the present condition of the Crown planta- 

 tions, made about seventy-five years ago, is certainly not 

 satisfactory, owing to the want of underwood, and the 

 excessive nature of the thinnings to which they have 

 been subjected. Over an extensive area in the New 

 Forest the Scotch pine mosses have been allowed to out- 

 grow the oaks they were intended to shelter temporarily. 

 The fact is, a forester is wanted at the head of our 

 Crown forests, who will see, among other things, that 

 they are properly underplanted, and that all blanks are 

 restocked ; but in order to do this successfully, the 

 rabbits, which now swarm in some of the woods, must be 

 kept down. This was not the case twenty years ago; 

 but their increase of late has been prodigious, and they 

 not only eat every natural seedling which appears, but 



NO. 1278, VOL. 49] 



also threaten the existence of the older trees by barking 

 them in the winter. 



It should be noted that the Crown forests are 

 managed by the State, and their proceeds go into the 

 Treasury, but that the sporting rights in some of them 

 are vested in the Crown. Surely the Royal sportsmen 

 might be contented with a moderate number of rabbits, 

 and with pheasants, which do no injury to the woods, 

 and not require the enormous multiplication of rabbits, 

 which no continental prince would suffer in his forests. 



It may be objected that by treating our Crown forests 

 for economic forestry, as is the case with the , Crown 

 woodlands in other European countries, we should intro- 

 duce uniformity, and spoil much of their picturesque- 

 ness. There are, however, 5000 acres in Epping Forest, 

 4000 in Windsor Park, and extensive tracts in the New 

 Forest, which might be reserved for the lovers of the 

 picturesque, and even then ioo,coo acres might be found 

 n the Crown forests which could be made into models 

 o 1 good forest management, which are at present not 

 to be found anywhere in Britain. W. R. Fisher, 



NOTES. 



It is stated that the Emperor of Austria has just made a 

 graceful recognition of the important services which the Geo- 

 logical Survey of India has rendered to science, by the presenta- 

 tion of gold medals to the two senior members of the Survey, 

 Dr. W. King and Mr. C. L. Griesbach. Surely for the 

 Emperor of Austria we should read Empress of India. 



The next annual meeting of the Museums Association is to 

 be held in Dublin, beginning on the 26th of June, and lasting 

 four days. Dr. Valentine Ball, C.B., F.R. S., is the President- 

 elect, and a strong local committee has been formed, with Dr. 

 R. F. Scharff and T, H. Longfield as honorary secretaries. 

 There will be a reception of the members on Tuesday, June 26, 

 at the Zoological Gardens, and on the following Thursday an 

 excursion will be made to the Wicklow Mountains. Last year's 

 meeting o f the Association in London, under the presidency of 

 Sir William H. Flower, resulted in the accretion of a consider- 

 able number of new members, and the Association has now 

 become a strong and successful body. 



The sixty-sixth annual meeting of German scientific and 

 medical men will be held this year at Vienna, from 24lh to 30th 

 September. This function is still more all-embracing than the 

 British Association, maintaining as it does the true brotherhood 

 of natural and physical sciences with the branches of medicine. 

 If all accounts be true which we hear of the section work at the 

 recent Medical Congress in Rome, the best-meant efforts at 

 organisation may sometimes fall short of their mark at a very 

 large meeting. But no city knows better than Vienna how to 

 entertain and, at the same time, to keep work going on 

 smoothly. Active preparations have already been begun for 

 the September meeting, and the programme of arrangements 

 will be issued in the beginning of July. 



A COMMISSION, nominated by the physical section of the 

 Amsterdam Society for the Advancement of Physics and Medi- 

 cine, and consisting of Profs. Gunning, van't Hofif, Polak, 

 van Deventer, and Lobry de Bruyn, has made arrangements 

 for the celebration of the centenary of the death of Lavoisier 

 on May 8. Prof. Gunning will deliver a commemorative 

 address, and Dr. van Deventer will describe the apparatus of 

 the Dutch physicist van Marum, by means of which he has 

 repeated the experiments of Lavoisier on combustion. The 

 apparatus, constructed like Lavoisier's, but improved by van 

 Marum, are contained in the museum of Teyler's Society at 

 Harlem. Some of the works, portraits, and letters of the French 

 investigator will also be exhibited at the coming celebration. 



