50 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



the records of private estates a long way from the sea, and 

 which show that the timber was simply felled and squared by 

 the axe in the wood and hauled by horses to its destination. 

 It was this demand which has led writers on forestry to dwell 

 so much on the wants of the navy when timber was the 

 material used in ship-building, and the demand for which only 

 fell off with the advent of iron and the use of foreign timber. 

 According to Marshall, 1785, a gentleman of leisure who travel- 

 led much injEngland in search of information on the subject of 

 planting, great inroads had been made in the forests of this 

 country in his time, but much was still left. With the decline of 

 the demand for ship timber arose the demand for oak and fir 

 for railway carriages, waggons, and sleepers, and we believe 

 that the demand for railway material of that description 

 has, during the last fifty years, exceeded the demand for the 

 navy at the time referred to above, with the result that our 

 stock of home-grown big timber is now approaching the 

 vanishing point. The main timbers of railway carriages are 

 still, by preference, made of English oak of good size, and, as 

 only the very straightest and soundest trees are used, and only 

 the best portions of these, the consumption of oak, in the shape 

 of railway material alone, may be imagined when it is added 

 that some of our great companies will now own from one to 

 nearly two hundred thousand carriages and waggons. Rail- 

 ways, of course, use a great variety of other kinds of timber ; 

 but oak for carriages and Scotch fir for sleepers for the per- 

 manent way represent the two kinds of timber for which the 

 demand is by far the greatest and it is constantly increasing. 

 That the oak and fir of these older British woods were 

 produced in dense forests, quite unlike those existing now, 

 and that the trees were tall and straight, is evident from the 

 fragments of our older woods still left, and other examples. 

 This applies to oak and Scotch fir principally, the first in 

 England and the latter in Scotland. The beams, joists, and 

 fittings in many old houses and cottages attest this. These 

 beams are long, straight, and of good girth from end to end. 

 In many cases the logs have not been sawn, but simply squared 

 by the axe in the forest and used in that way. In England 

 bridges over streams were constructed of home-grown oak 

 logs of . great length and stoutness. Some years ago the 

 timber of an old bridge of this description, in Norfolk, was 

 still so good that it was advertised for sale and was bought 

 by a Yorkshire timber merchant. The logs were from sixty to 

 seventy feet long, and squared only a little less at the small 



