52 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



was put into the hands of a well-known London auctioneer, 

 who brought purchasers from far and near. All the trees 

 were large and old, some of the lots averaging eighty cubic 

 feet per tree throughout, and the others not much less. They 

 readily realised from 2s. 6d. to 3s. per foot standing in the 

 wood, although nearly four miles from a station. Such 

 examples are yet to be found in old and once dense woods 

 near mansions, but they are not common and are seldom for 

 sale. The oaks in Sherwood Forest are large, but they are 

 not good sylvicultural examples, and the noted Major Oak, the 

 biggest tree in the forest, is an excellent example of what a 

 timber-tree should NOT be, covering, as it does, a large portion 

 of an acre with its numerous boughs, which spread out from a 

 rough, short trunk. A nice little crop of trees, of the dimen- 

 sions and value described by Gilbert White, could be reared 

 on the space occupied by the Major Oak. Sherwood has long 

 been an open, thin forest, hence the park-like form of the trees 

 there. 



In Yorkshire and elsewhere, before iron was substituted for 

 timber to the extent it is now, and before foreign timber 

 became common, good home-grown timber fetched a much 

 higher price than it does at present, and labour and cultural 

 expenses were less, as many estate records could show. The 

 demand in those days was good, and no doubt ( led to the 

 undue thinning of woods on many estates, and the production 

 of rough timber in that which was left to grow. In fact the decay 

 now noticeable in many old woods is due to nothing- else but ex- 

 posure by over-thinning after the trees had reached mature age. 

 If a strict rotation system of clearing off and re-planting . had 

 been followed, instead of a timid system of repeated thinnings 

 and mismanagement, in all probability our woods would have 

 been in a very different condition now. It is plain to the most 

 casual observer that in many old oak woods the lower 

 branches (which in park trees would be the oldest and the 

 largest) are much smaller than the branches which form the 

 tops of the trees, and the explanation is that the lower branches 

 have been produced at a much later period than the tops, 

 their production being due to the broken overhead canopy 

 encouraging the late growth. These branches often clothe the 

 trunks of old oaks from top to bottom, and have a pleasing 

 effect to the eye, but they are in the wrong place, and in aged 

 trees are produced at the expense of the proper top, as" they 

 absorb the sap as it ascends, and which should flow to the top 

 of the tree. French foresters, according to Bagneris, call such 



