3i6 ENGLISH ESTATE FORESTRY 



was tben undertaken by the proprietor himself, or, on large 

 estates, by the land steward — the latter class usually be- 

 longing to the now extinct yeoman type. Estates which now 

 employ a resident agent, half a dozen estate office clerks, and 

 as many heads of departments, were then managed by a land 

 steward of this kind — the gardener being perhaps the only 

 department which had a distinct existence, and by whom a 

 certain amount of forestry was done. The few men in the 

 country at that time who made forestry a speciality were 

 either nurserymen who had a more or less direct eye to the 

 sale of young trees, or those who made all branches of estate 

 work a speciality, and included forestry amongst the rest. 



It was not until the introduction of the larch and other 

 coniferous trees adapted for planting waste land that the 

 modern forester came into existence to any extent. He 

 doubtless originated in Scotland, for, owing to the far greater 

 extent of waste land in that country, planting, when it did 

 begin, was conducted on a far larger scale, and was therefore 

 more rapidly specialised. When the extensive planting 

 operations, which resulted from the enclosure of wastes and 

 the desire to improve the landscape, were inaugurated about 

 the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth 

 centuries, proprietors began to look out for men who under- 

 stood the work better than the local woodman, and who could 

 devote more time to it than the estate gardener. The old- 

 fashioned land steward had been replaced, to a great extent, 

 by Scotch agents, and the latter naturally had a preference 

 for their own countrymen, independent of their greater skill 

 in the work of planting waste ground. The history of 

 forestry on most estates consequently shows traces of Scotch 

 foresters about this period, and it is highly probable that 

 they, or their descendants and disciples, revolutionised English 

 forestry to a great extent. Mixed plantations of conifers and 

 hardwoods, and pure plantations of larch, Scots fir, or spruce, 

 took the place of or rather succeeded the old coppice with 

 standards, which had been the prevailing system in England 

 for the previous two hundred years. Much of the land then 

 planted was of course too poor for coppice, but very little of 

 the latter appears to have been planted on even good ground. 



The appearance of the professional forester was also 



