THE NEW FORESTRY. 3 



thoroughly up to their business theoretically and practically. 

 Continental forestry, as represented in Germany, is not the 

 creation of any school, because the forests were there before 

 the schools, and the science of forestry only proceeds on natural 

 lines and principles systematically applied. 



In the following chapters the author has not, except where 

 needful, given the reason of every operation described or 

 practice suggested, but nothing is advanced, he hopes, for 

 which a good reason can not be given. This course has been 

 adopted to avoid involved directions and save time. Some of 

 the practices recommended have, in some form or other, 

 appeared in the English and Scotch agricultural and horticul- 

 tural papers within the last five-and-twenty years, during which 

 period the author has been a contributor to these papers — • 

 especially in relation to the operations of planting, thinning, 

 pruning of forest trees, etc., he never having subscribed to the 

 opinions generally -held on these subjects by foresters in this 

 country. His convictions on these heads, though confirmed 

 by what he has seen and read, were really founded on obser- 

 vations made long ago in the wood, in the saw mill, and in the 

 timber market in a part of England where the consumption of 

 timber, both home and foreign, is enormous. In the wood he 

 saw the conditions under which the trees grew and shaped 

 themselves in different ways ; in the saw mill where the waste 

 was ; while in the market he quickly realised in which direction 

 the forester must direct his attention if he wished to profitably 

 compete with other countries in the timber trade. At this 

 period there were practically no books on Continental forestry 

 in the English language to read, and not much was known by 

 foresters on the subject. The author has seen French forestry 

 exhibitions and French forests, but a study of German forestry, 

 as described in German works, induced him to personally 

 inspect some of the most notable timber forests in the Hartz 

 Mountain region and in Central Germany where the climate 

 and other conditions are similar to our own, and much that is 

 advanced in this work has been suggested by what he saw 

 there. Between German and French forestry there is not much 

 difference, but Germany is the best school for an English 

 forester, because a good deal might be attributed to climate in 

 France, whereas the great German forests exist under climatic 

 and geological conditions so similar to those of Great Britain 

 and Ireland that the difference is not worth mentioning. The 

 same trees can be grown in exactly the same way, and equally 

 good in both countries, and even in more southern France it 



