20 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



going diagram looks formal on paper, owing to the paths being 

 straight, but the plan would not look formal laid out in a wood. 

 The diagram, however, only shows the principle on which such 

 a wood might be laid out, and any wood, of whatever shape or 

 size, may be treated in the same way. The clumps may be 

 large or small, few or numerous, regular or irregular, but the 

 fewer the better for the timber crop. There might be one 

 clump of covert, of a rood or more in extent, to every twenty 

 acres of timber or thereabouts, and the wood is supposed to 

 be shot over lengthways. In short, the wood is simply thrown 

 into blocks of timber that beaters and dogs can easily work, 

 and the ovals are clearings with low berry-bearing and other 

 bushes, where the guns can be posted as desired. Although 

 the paths are more numerous than are needed in a wood, they 

 will not seriously affect the density of the crop, provided the 

 margins of the blocks are kept dense. 



In addition to the drives, narrow footpaths, about one yard 

 wide, and winding, may be made every ten or twelve yards 

 apart to admit beaters. These paths we have made in very 

 dense plantations, not by removing any trees, but by nipping 

 off the lower branches, or a portion of them, up to a man's 

 height or a little higher. In plantations arranged in this way 

 all objectons to density are removed. 



SECTION IV. — ARTIFICIAL SYSTEM OF REARING 

 PHEASANTS. 



This is the only part of the keeper's business that the 

 forester is not quite familiar with, and which it is proposed to 

 abolish for reasons that will be given, and because it is, next to 

 the rabbit scourge, a branch of the keeper's business that 

 hinders the work in the woods more than anything else, con- 

 ducted as at present. It is, however, a business he may soon 

 learn to conduct with as much success as it is conducted at 

 present at least, and as will be shown; for if anything 

 approaching the same mortality prevailed among any other 

 kind of live stock as commonly prevails among home-reared 

 pheasants, there would be a panic on estates. 



With regard to this particular branch of the keeper's 

 .business, and with a view to simplifying matters under the 

 system of management now proposed for the sake of the 

 woods, we venture here to discuss a subject that has, we 

 believe, not yet been thoroughly ventilated, namely, the com- 

 parative merits of the two systems of rearing pheasants generally 



