VI INTEODUCTION. 



under that title, is afforded by the circumstance 

 that, at a period when there was little public 

 interest in aught connected with forestry, this 

 work should have passed through three editions. 



During recent years public feeling on the sub- 

 ject of our wild woodlands has undergone a vast 

 change ; and the reason for this change is not far 

 to seek. Unfeelingly, persistently, remorselessly, 

 the hand of the spoiler has been at work over all 

 our fair island. Primeval woods have been 

 robbed of their ancient splendour. Bricks and 

 mortar have been rapidly choking the country — as 

 God made it. The greenwood shade, over large 

 areas, has given place to hot and dusty streets. 

 Eailways, mines, and manufactures have oblite- 

 rated, all around us, the forest lawn, redolent of 

 the perfume of wild plants; the forest heath, 

 empurpled with the bloom of heather, or golden 

 with flowering gorse; the woodland copse and 

 ancient stately grove which sweetly strained 

 the music of the winds. A population rapidly 

 augmenting, and the increasing necessities of a 

 commercial nation, advancing with rapid strides 

 in the path of prosperity, have — necessarily^evied 



