200 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



apprenticeship to both gardening and forestry as the first 

 preparation for the post of forester, unless he can afford to go 

 to a forestry school. Even Brown has admitted in his 

 " Forester " that, with a few exceptions, many foresters in this 

 country are mere workmen whose only qualification is that 

 they can plant trees in the usual way and cut them down when 

 they are ready for the axe. Sir Henry Stewart, in his 

 "Planter's Guide," dedicated to the King, 1828, describes 

 foresters, even in Scotland, as " mere loppers and cutters of 

 wood," and declared that gentlemen saw with the eyes and 

 heard with the ears of their gardeners, who were a class of men 

 of superior intelligence. 



What gives the gardener the advantage of the forester, 

 whose experience has been confined to woods alone, is the 

 far more extensive' and varied nature of his experience and 

 knowledge in plant and tree culture, derived from experience 

 in the garden, in public nurseries, and from books, sources of 

 which the young forester has hitherto rarely availed himself. 



The gardener is already an accomplished arboriculturist, 

 or tree grower, and he has only to reverse the process to 

 become a sylviculturist or timber grower. There are a few 

 things in forestry his education does not prepare him for, such 

 as planting and thinning for timber, and valuing standing 

 timber, etc., but these may soon be learned, and the time will 

 probably soon come when all timber will be. felled by the 

 vendor and measured and sold down, instead of standing, 

 when valuing becomes an easy task. 



We strongly advise young gardeners to learn forestry. 

 On many large estates gardeners already have control of the 

 woods, and on estates where no regular forester is employed 

 they have long performed all the chief duties of the forester. 

 It is not suggested that the gardeners should usurp the 

 forester's place, but it would certainly often be an advantage 

 to both the employer and the employed if the gardens and 

 woods could be worked in conjunction on estates of moderate 

 extent. 



