THE ENGLISH FORESTER 321 



remarks which are more forcible than polite, then he deserves 

 better conditions for working under, and it is in the interests 

 of his employer that he should get them. 



When, then, a forester is really wanted on an estate, let 

 him be a forester first, and, if necessary, a supervisor of odd 

 work afterwards. If the forestry is only to be done at odd 

 times, it will probably be found cheaper not to employ a 

 forester at all, but to employ a handy man with a few 

 elementary ideas on wood-work, and so on, and let him do 

 it to the best of his ability. We do not suppose that any 

 estate proprietor who engages a forester has the faintest idea 

 of engaging him under false pretences. And yet this is what 

 it practically amounts to when a man is engaged as a forester, 

 and ostensibly for the management of estate woods, and then 

 finds, when he enters upon his duties, that the forestry part 

 of them is merely a detail. An estate owner does not engage 

 a farm bailiff to attend to his carriage horses, or a gardener 

 to grow oats or mangels. Why, then, should he employ a 

 forester to act as ganger over a miscellaneous squad of 

 labourers, or as a sort of general foreman to two or three 

 estate departments ? No forester of average intelligence con- 

 siders any estate work beneath his dignity, provided it is 

 entrusted to his charge in a business-like manner. But he 

 has every right to object to being made a tool of, or used as 

 a stopgap, for the benefit of another department, and to the 

 detriment of his legitimate work. 



There is little reason to doubt that both the capabilities 

 of the forester and the improvement of the woods entrusted 

 to his charge would be vastly improved if he occupied a more 

 definite position on the estate. It matters little whether he 

 receives a salary of one, two, three, or four pounds a week, 

 provided that he is able to feel that the woods are his special 

 charge, and that their condition or improvement depends 

 more or less upon his own exertions. If his mind is 

 satisfied on this point, the condition of his woods will soon 

 indicate the extent of his ability, and his employer can 

 easily estimate its value to himself or the estate. But when 

 a forester is expected to act on his own responsibility to-day, 

 and act on orders received from someone else to-morrow, it 

 is impossible for him to do justice to himself, to acquire 



