APPENDIX 



want of supervision and foresight, until practically nothing is left 

 of any market value or benefit to the country. It must be so, 

 because generations of men are much shorter than the lives of 

 trees. Therefore forests will never be managed to the advantage 

 of the country except by State regulation. The Wirthschaft Flan, 

 or ' working plan,' is the keystone of forestry, and without this 

 foundation everything is haphazard and futile. 



The perfection to which forest management is brought in the 

 Harz mountains is most striking. Every plot of land has its 

 place in the general scheme, and everyone knows what is to be 

 done next. The healthful, muscle-producing employment given 

 to a large, thriving population is a source of great strength to the 

 country, and exactly the right quantity of timber and firewood is 

 produced on the spot to supply the market, which is not flooded 

 at one time and starved at another. Such is a forest district 

 ' working plan ' on the Hochwald principle, as found to perfection 

 in Germany. 



I had the honour of reading a paper on Forestry before the 

 Society of Arts in 1872, in which I strongly advocated the 

 adoption in England of scientific forestry. The discussion which 

 followed showed that the learned disputants had come there to 

 air their eloquence, not from interest in forest culture, but in 

 opposition to its introduction into Crown forests ; and that by 

 forest principles they meant the rights of owners of pigs to graze 

 them in the New Forest, and of every man who lived near to 

 carry away top and lop for firewood. 



It is strange that the British people, so shrewd and enterprising 

 in trade, seems never to look further ahead than what concerns 

 each man's own immediate profit. The manufacturing classes, to 

 inflate their own gains, have selfishly eaten up the landed interest 

 and impoverished the agricultural class. The mining classes are 

 frantically engaged in exhausting the mineral stores of Nature. 

 We English have destroyed the fine forests once covering our 

 hills, and are blind to the fact that hacking down the trees (to 

 which, in the colonies, is given the significant name of ' lumber ') 

 all over the world, and planting none, means timber famine in the 

 future. Experts declare it a very near future. Yet not a move 

 has yet been made by the British Government to restore British 

 forests or educate foresters scientifically, and it is only at the 



21 



Importance of 

 the Wirth- 

 schaft Plan, or 

 'working plan.' 



Forest princi- 

 ples misunder- 

 stood in Eng- 

 land. 



British want of 

 foresight and 

 selfishness. 



