JANUARY 11 



Now, so great is the prejudice of Englisli landowners 

 against treating woodland commercially, and so great 

 their affection for individual trees, that had I spoken the 

 thought in my mind my host had dubbed me a miserly, 

 bawbee-hunting Scot. So I held my peace. None the 

 less am I convinced that the proper treatment of these 

 remaining oaks is to fell and sell them, to make way for 

 a fresh crop. There seemed to be about thirty of these 

 lofty oaks left upon each of the fifty acres. At present 

 prices these clean-grown stems cannot be worth less than 

 £7, 10s. a piece as they stand. The aggregate value, 

 therefore, of the whole wood still amounts to £11,300.^ 



Here was a typical instance of the condition of things 

 on many estates. The owner is generally devoted to his 

 trees, and regards it as sacrilege to treat them as a crop. 

 He takes pride in what he believes to be judicious 

 thinning, which is nearly always thinning carried to an 

 injudicious extent, so as to induce a maximum of great 

 limbs and a minimum of clean stem. He dabbles in 

 arboriculture, but is ignorant of the principles of forestry ,2 

 with the result that what might have been a valuable 

 and productive woodland is turned into a mixture of 

 arboretum, pleasure-ground, and game preserve, which 

 seldom covers the expense of keeping, still less yields 

 any equivalent to the agricultural rent of the land. It 

 is picturesque, indeed, and full of delightful combina- 



^ I have purposely made this calculation extremely low. It is a fact 

 that my friend showed me where one of these oaks on the outskirt of the 

 wood had been recently felled, and the timber thereof sold for £20. 



^ The two crafts are very different from each other, yet the terms are 

 often treated as synonymous. It is ominous of this misconception that 

 the chief organisation for promoting forestry in Scotland should be called 

 the Scottish Arboricultural Society, 



