62 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



the same qualities, and our soil and climate are quite as 

 capable of growing it ; but its use in many industries and for 

 many purposes has been largely replaced by other materials. 

 Iron has taken its place in ship-building and bridge-building ; 

 iron and lighter and cheaper wood combined in architecture ; 

 larch takes its place to a great extent in rural fencing work ; 

 while even oak from Europe and America is imported and 

 given the preference to the native product, owing to the 

 greater ease with which it is worked. Its bark is replaced 

 by foreign barks, and bark extracts which do their work 

 quicker if less efficiently, and its acorns are now looked upon 

 more as a nuisance than as a blessing, owing to their in- 

 jurious effect on grazing cattle. 



The question often presents itself to the student of 

 English forestry : Is the oak worth growing as a timber 

 tree for profit ? The answer to this question is not easier 

 to answer conclusively than one referring to any other timber 

 tree in this country, for the simple reason that we cannot 

 foresee the state of the future market in this or any other 

 kind of timber. But there are special features relating to 

 the oak which do not occur with all trees, and which have a 

 very important bearing on the question. In the first place, 

 the oak is not only one of our slowest-growing forest trees, 

 but also takes longer to mature than any. This means that 

 neither the planter nor his immediate successors reap any 

 benefit from the crop except such as is afforded by the bark 

 and timber of immature thinnings. To plant oak pure or as 

 a main crop tree is a slow, risky, and more or less unprofit- 

 able business, unless an exceptionally rapid rate of growth 

 and exceptionally good market can be attained ; and this 

 cannot be guaranteed beforehand. 



But another, and in some respects more serious, objection 

 to oak lies in its refusal to flourish on anything but the best 

 soil and situation. Land which will grow good oak at a 

 fairly rapid rate will usually grow anything, and to lock such 

 land up for a hundred years or more is a proceeding which 

 few proprietors care to undertake on anything but a limited 

 scale. One hundred and fifty years ago, when most of our 

 present oak woods were planted or developed, in the form of 

 coppice with standards, conditions were very different to 



