THE NEW FORESTRY. 1 99 



hitherto, although the mismanagement has not been due so 

 much to the neglect of owners themselves as to the ignorance 

 of those who professed to understand the business and who 

 advised them. The only men fitted to engage in scientific 

 forestry at present are those who have had a gardener's 

 education to begin with. That, the ordinary woodman of 

 the past has seldom had. It might have been supposed 

 that two professions so closely connected as forestry 

 and gardening would have progressed hand-in-hand.- But 

 they have not done so, for horticulture has gone ahead, 

 while forestry has almost stood still. On many estates 

 not a few of the more important duties of the forester 

 have devolved upon the gardener, and it is an indisputable 

 fact that with the exception of some recent works nearly 

 all that has been written on forestry and allied subjects 

 has been written by gardeners, while the horticultural press 

 v has served as the organ of forestry, every attempt of the latter 

 to establish a paper of its own having failed from want of 

 support from owners of woods and their foresters. Arbori- 

 cultural societies have, as is well known, been next to impotent 

 institutions, and have had little or no hand in the present 

 revival of forestry, which originated from outside sources, 

 including the horticultural and agricultural press. The Conti- 

 nental system of forestry, now recommended for adoption in 

 this country, was in operation long before our arboricultural 

 societies were founded, has been in force for over a quarter- 

 of-a-century in our Indian forests ; and our arboricultural 

 societies, with means and influence at their disposal, might 

 have been expected to introduce an improved system at home 

 to which general practice might conform, but their " trans- 

 actions " show few or no signs of their having ever realised the 

 necessity of moving in a practical direction, or of having had 

 any real acquaintance with any other system of forestry than 

 that practised by the mistaken followers of Brown, among 

 whom their awards and commendations have been somewhat 

 promiscuously distributed from time to time. And this has 

 been going on while a system of forestry, reduced almost to an 

 exact science, has been in operation at our door, so to speak, 

 and the products of which have been a constantly standing 

 evidence of our own mistaken practice. 



This is not the first time it has been pointed out that a 

 mere labourer's experience in woods for a few years is insuffi- 

 cient to qualify a man to have charge of woods and plantations 

 on estates. The young intending forester should serve a joint 



