INTRODUCTION. 5 



went the woodcutters, felling every valuable tree 

 before them, unmindful of the formidable obstacles 

 to transport, which prevented more than a small 

 proportion of the felled timber coming to market. 



Deciduous mixed forests, too, were drained of 

 all their best varieties of timber, and the forest 

 acquired a new feature, by the predominance of 

 inferior kinds and worthless crooked timber. 



The urgent necessity of doing something to 

 avert the total extinction of the forests, or, at 

 least, what was almost equivalent to it, the de- 

 struction of their value by mismanagement and 

 neglect, became at length recognised with more or 

 less force, and some twenty years ago a Forest 

 Department was formed for the better adminis- 

 tration of the remaining forests. 



The difficulties which the new Department had 

 to encounter were almost incalculable. England, 

 with its vast wealth of iron and coal, was in a 

 measure independent of forest products, and, if 

 we except Evelyn's " Sylva," had no forest litera- 

 ture of any value as applied to this country. 

 Ruined forests were to be treated systematically 

 by men who, whatever their general abilities and 

 many of them, at least the provincial chiefs, were 

 men of no mean ability as botanists were never- 

 theless not only unacquainted with the first prin- 

 ciples of the science of forestry, but, for the most 



