8 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



master, that was the cause of the Ground Game Act, that has 

 lessened his employer's sport, exterminated hares on many 

 estates, and embittered the relations between tenants and 

 landlords. Now it is a question of woods and game, and the 

 question will not be solved satisfactorily while the irresponsible 

 and often ignorant keeper has any authority in the matter. It 

 cannot be supposed that owners plant extensively in the expec- 

 tation of having their plantations destroyed, but they trust 

 too much to their keepers to whose carelessness much of the 

 destruction of young plantations is due. The gamekeeper of 

 the past is behind the times, and is usually in conflict with 

 everyone else who has the general interests of his employer 

 and his estate at heart. 



The subject came before the Select Committee on Forestry, 

 as it could not help doing in any enquiry of the kind. Professor 

 Elliott, of Cirencester Agricultural College, in his evidence 

 dwelt on " the great drawback " to forestry in this country by 

 the present association of woods with game, and 

 Mr. McCorquodale, of Scone Palace, Perth, a forester factor of 

 long experience, did the same, explaining to the Committee 

 the extent of the ravages committed by rabbits to various 

 species of trees up to one hundred years of age. There is, 

 unfortunately, not the least doubt about the extent of the 

 destruction to woods by rabbits. Young plantations especially 

 are often quite destroyed, and always suffer more or less accord- 

 ing to the number of rabbits on the ground. This itself 

 amounts to serious loss, and when old trees are barked the 

 loss is still greater. Smooth-barked plantation trees of ash, elm, 

 sycamore, and beech suffer most. When the trees are in the pole 

 stage they are often barked right round and die, and have to be 

 removed. Others are partly barked, and while a strip of bark 

 is left the tree lives, but the growth is checked, and the loss of 

 increment thereby to the trunk represents a sensible loss in 

 its value. The annual increment on a tree represents the 

 interest on its standing value, and this may almost totally 

 disappear in a tree, crippled but not killed by being barked at 

 the base of the trunk. Such losses often extend to thousands 

 of cubic feet over large areas. Great numbers of trees in this 

 condition are to be seen in nearly all woods, and the blank 

 spaces usually represent trees that have been killed outright. 

 Keepers are in the habit of rubbing freshly barked trees over 

 with soil and placing sods over the wounds to prevent the 

 damage being discovered, but woodmen have been long ac- 

 quainted with these tricks and are not deceived. 



