FORESTRY 153 



by the leases and grants to the various tenants; 

 how they were farmed, we have to glean from the 

 complaints as to breaches of the conditions of 

 the leases. That the underwood was regularly 

 cut either by the tenant or by the Crown, is 

 shown by the receipts for sales of this kind. All 

 actual timber seems to have been taken for the 

 Navy. 



But the presentment as to the "shrouding," 

 of trees, and as to the cutting of "four oaks by 

 the ground" shows, if the woods themselves did 

 not tell the tale, that pollarding the trees was 

 the prescribed practice. 



The effect, quite apart from scientific forestry, 

 is certainly most beautiful. The great spreading 

 trees, covering, no doubt, five times the space they 

 ought to occupy when the main consideration is 

 the number of cubic feet of timber to be produced 

 per acre, are therefore anathema to the forester, 

 who avers that he is nothing if he is not com- 

 mercial but to the ordinary lover of beautiful 

 forest scenery they are very dear. 



I well recollect one of the most distinguished 

 scientific foresters of my time declaring to me 

 that he had never seen an English hedgerow tree 

 that was worth looking at as a tree. 



I, with my mind full of hundreds of glorious 

 hedgerow ashes in the East Biding of Yorkshire 



