RESULTS OF IGNORANCE 165 



trade necessitated the production of large branches, 

 crooks, and curved timber on the trees. In order to 

 produce these it was essential that each tree should 

 be given a great deal of growing space, the result 

 being loss of height-growth, short bole, and large 

 branches. As soon as these latter no longer found a 

 market for which they were grown, forestry operations 

 resulted in a loss, the only saleable part of the tree 

 being the bole, of greatly curtailed length. This was 

 bad enough, but worse was to follow. Plantations 

 were formed of other species, especially conifers, to 

 which the old principles and methods of thinning were 

 applied, or something having a close resemblance to 

 these old methods. Consequently the new woods 

 were systematically over-thinned, the trees branched 

 low, the bole was stunted and full of knots, the volume 

 of timber realised per acre was much below what it 

 should have been — all witness to the impracticability 

 of applying a perfectly correct sylvicultural system 

 for one class of material to the production of a different 

 one. The results of the past half to three-quarters of 

 a century have not been due so much to a decadence 

 of British forestry as to an unfortunate want of know- 

 ledge of the methods to be employed to produce the 

 classes of material imported in large quantities from 

 the Continent, classes which have easily and success- 

 fully competed with the home-grown article. A golden 

 opportunity would now seem to have arrived to 

 rectify matters. 



With this brief summary we will now turn to a 

 survey of the present production of forestry materials 

 (timber, pit props, and wood pulp, and so on) and 



