20 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



sands, and peat deposits are probably the most favourable 

 for economic forestry, and such are the Tertiary, Greensand, 

 etc., which cover a considerable area in the south of 

 England ; but in the north, where the mountain ranges are 

 more extensive, more elevated, and probably more uniform 

 in their character, considerable areas are covered by gravels 

 which are equally as favourable to tree growth as the deeper 

 gravel beds in the south of England. To show the distri- 

 bution of woods more clearly, the table on page 21, extracted 

 from the Eeturns of the Board of Agriculture, may be 

 given. 



A brief examination of the table reveals the fact that 

 the best wooded counties of England are Berks, Hants, Kent, 

 Surrey, and Sussex. These counties are not conspicuous 

 by the existence of mountain land, and it is a significant 

 indication of the uneconomic lines upon which English 

 forestry is conducted, that the class of land which ought to 

 be most heavily wooded is least so. 



In describing the condition of these million and a half 

 acres of woodland in England, it is necessary to discriminate 

 between the plantations of conifers or mixed conifers and 

 hardwoods which prevail in the north of England and on the 

 poorer soils generally, and the older sylvicultural system 

 known as coppice with standards which is more or less 

 universal in the Midlands and southern counties. Taking 

 the ordinary plantations first, it may be stated in a general 

 way that their condition is anything but good. Why this 

 should be so is due to many causes, and an endeavour will be 

 made to enumerate a few of them. In the first place, there 

 is little doubt that the English planter of the last hundred 

 years or so has suffered from the disadvantage of having too 

 big a list of species to choose from. That development in 

 the introduction of coniferous trees, which may be said to 

 have begun with the larch about the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, and which is still going on at the present day, is 

 responsible for an imsettling of planters' minds, which is 

 anything but conducive to economic forestry. At short 

 intervals of a few years or so, the introduction of a species 

 of conifer is invariably announced with a great flourish of 

 trumpets, and we are assured by the highest authorities that 



