216 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
advancing age and stronger demand for growing- 
space, the capital value thus increased artificially 
is gradually allowed to decrease again without 
yielding any permanent advantage to the land- 
owner. ‘This seems quite self-evident, when one 
comes to think the matter out. The only possible 
explanation of the British method of ‘ Arbori- 
culture’ must therefore be found in the fact that 
the vast majority of our woodlands are game 
coverts and pleasure woods, and that their owners 
do not care to treat them merely, or mainly, on a 
commercial footing as crops of timber. Surely, 
however, if waste lands can be shown to be 
thus profitably productive of timber, our national 
‘shop-keeping” instincts, with which we have 
ever been credited by more economical Conti- 
nental: countries, might also have full play even 
without interfering at all with the existing game 
preserves and ornamental woods in all parts of 
these Islands. 
On the better classes of pine soil natural re- 
generation can easily be effected. But this method 
is on the whole unusual for pure crops of pine, 
as the damage done to the young seedlings by 
overshadowing is not compensated by the in- 
