THE NEW FORESTRY. 39 



writers named. Indeed, the resemblance of portions of " The 

 Forester " to the works of these older writers is suggestive, 

 and does not harmonize with Brown's claim, p. 5, that the 

 " vast advances " made in the principal features of forest 

 tree culture were chiefly confined to a period of about thirty 

 years previous to 1880 — or the period covered by the several 

 editions of his own book. This is particularly noticeable in 

 reference to such subjects as thinning and pruning, for 

 example, which Brown dilates upon at great length and often, 

 relating, p. 42, that pruning was the branch of forestry least 

 understood some forty years before 1882, and how much had 

 been learned since ; whereas he was anticipated nearly a 

 hundred years before by Sang and others. Sang practically 

 wrote Nicols' , " Planters' Kalendar," 1812, a conscientiously 

 written work, and a guide to both foresters and writers. 



The above references to Brown are not conceived in any 

 hostile spirit. We know him only from his writings and his 

 work on well-known estates which we are familiar with, and 

 desire only to show here that a work which, up till now, has 

 been regarded by some as a safe guide, and which professed 

 to teach the latest and best methods of forestry practice, had 

 little claim to be regarded in that light. We refer to the 

 original editions, of course. 



How or when Brown's system originated it is difficult to 

 say. We once thought, and it is still held by some, that his 

 system of growing timber-trees was simply the gardener's plan 

 of growing trees for ornamental purposes, carried to the 

 woods — some say by gardeners themselves ; but that was not 

 the case. It seems probable that it began with Evelyn, and 

 filtered down through later writers till Brown's time, as there is 

 a strong family resemblance running through the principal 

 works on forestry since Evelyn's time. 



Brown's system, in its most important aspects, was to plant 

 the permanent crop thin, fill up with an extravagant number 

 of profitless and often useless nurses, and thin early and 

 often, until the final crop was reaped, if that ever happened ; 

 for rotation,; which determines how long capital shall be locked 

 up in standing timber and regulates successional planting, 

 had no place in his system. Neither was density nor the 

 shade-bearing capacity of different species regarded as factors 

 in the production of good timber, nor, so far as we know, 

 are they even mentioned in his book. Crowding, of course, 

 he regarded as an , unmitigated evil, and the protection , of the 

 soil in forests, according to the species and over-head canopy, 



