336 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
tracts, is perhaps that though the owners of traction 
engines or road locomotives are liable for damage 
caused to fields or plantations by fires ignited 
through their sparks, yet railway companies (con- 
sequent on a legal decision in 1894) have no such 
liability at present. 
The weak points of British Forestry are now 
much better known, and are more generally 
acknowledged, than was the case but a few years 
ago. And the best remedies are plain. These 
consist in improved technical instruction, both 
theoretical and practical, so as to provide well- 
trained, skilful wood-managers and wood-reeves 
for the better management of existing woodlands, 
and in greater encouragement and assistance to 
be given by the State to landowners than have yet 
been extended to them, to induce them to form 
plantations on poor land and ‘ waste’ tracts once 
under woods. Given these, there can be little 
doubt that the good prospects of the timber 
market of the near future would soon lead to 
considerable improvements in British Forestry, 
without appreciably affecting the maintenance of 
a reasonable head of game of all the better sorts 
to satisfy the true sporting tastes of that best 
of men, the English Country Gentleman. 
