38 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



tioned to which oak is now put are pit-props and timber for 

 small coasting vessels ; whereas when Brown wrote, and long 

 before he wrote, the demand for oak for all purposes, but 

 especially for railway waggons and carriages, probably greatly 

 exceeded that of any former period. We know the record of 

 sales on many estates, and extensive buyers and consumers 

 who have been in the timber trade for nearly half-a-cehtury, 

 and the extent of the transactions in both cases would greatly 

 surprise and interest those who are interested in timber pro- 

 duction. . We refer to Yorkshire more particularly, but we are 

 also assured that the oak timber industries in Sussex, Surrey, 

 and elsewhere, are equally important. 



Brown's " economic uses " of the Scotch fir show equal 

 ignorance. He did hot consider Scotch fir trees,, measuring 

 from six-inch to eight-inch diameter, as of timber dimensions 

 (p. 292), which sizes, he states, are used only for making staves 

 for barrels and similar purposes ; whereas . Scotch fir, of the 

 sizes given, produce a very large proportion of the six-inch 

 deals imported to this country for flooring and other purposes, 

 and the quantity is very large. An examination of such deals 

 will show that they represent the full diameter of the tree, 

 and they are either from tops of large trees or from small 

 trees. Forestry in this country, as a commercial industry, 

 will always be ruled by the timber trade and the nature of the 

 demand — a fact which planters must keep in mind in the future 

 much more than they have done in the past. As regards forest- 

 tree culture, " The Forester " cannot be said to be a record of 

 persona] observation and experience, but it shows plainly 

 enough that the author followed closely in the footsteps of his 

 predecessors, old and obsolete as some of them were. His 

 aim appears to have been to write an encyclopaedia of forestry, 

 as Loudon did of gardening, and the plan of " The Forester," 

 from the title-page to the last numbered paragraph, might have 

 been modelled on the lines of Loudon's laborious work — only 

 Loudon was scrupulous to acknowledge his authorities. So 

 far as we have been able to discover, there is hardly an opinion 

 or practice of any importance, on the management of woods 

 and plantations, in all Brown's work that is not dealt with 

 such as Nicol, Sang, Pontz, Marshall, Loudon, Sir Henry 

 by writers of the last and beginning of the present century, 

 Stewart, and others, although Brown only incidentally acknow- 

 ledges the existence of such writers. Brown's "Principles," 

 his planting, notching, pitting, nursing, thinning, pruning, 

 etc., etc., are practically identical with those of the older 



