145 



by the organisation of a State department of forestry and a State 

 system of forestry education. It is altogether a mistake to suppose as 

 is often the case, that the whole or even a large part of the forests 

 on the continent belong to the respective States. The amount of 

 State-owned forest is surprisingly small. Fernow gives it in Ger- 

 many as about 33 per cent, of the whole forest area ; in Scandinavia 

 15 to 20 per cent., in France some 10 per cent., in Switzerland 4 

 per cent., whilst in Italy it is not 2 per cent. The bulk of the 

 forest is in the hands of private owners or corporate bodies, subject, 

 though apparently not always, to some control or limitation by the 

 State. But the example of the States in the management of their 

 own woods, their readiness to give advice through their officials, and the 

 education which is carefully provided for those concerned in forestry 

 work, have resulted in those privately-owned forests being as well 

 managed as those of the State. It is important to make clear this dis- 

 tinction, because it shows that a State system of conservancy and super- 

 vision of forestry is quite compatible with large private ownership in 

 forests, and that efficient sylviculture upon a large scale is not insepara- 

 ble from State ownership. 



15. But some one may say, " We, too, have State forests !" Yes, but 

 it is almost absurd to mention them in the same sentence with those of 

 the continent for any part they play at present in connection with 

 forestry in Britain. The nine thousand acres at Windsor are mainly 

 covered with specimen trees. Of the twenty-five thousand acres in the 

 Forest of Dean, a portion is supposed to be cultivated for a profitable 

 crop, but appears to result in an annual deficit. The New Forest, with 

 its sixty-three thousand acres of soil-area, affords ns one of the most 

 interesting object-lessons, showing the triumph of sentiment over com- 

 mon-sense, that the country affords. It9 history is well enough known, 

 and I need only remind you that Parliament has decreed the major part 

 of it to persist as a barren waste, whilst in the remainder, which is 

 covered with trees, the practice of forestry is prohibited, so that slowly 

 the whole is going to wreck and ruin. This illustrates the value to us 

 of State forests ! In the days of the " wooden walls" the dockyards 

 obtained valuable timber from them, but now their large area is, one 

 may say of no State service whatever as forest, if one excepts a small 

 portion of Windsor Forest recently attached for instruction purposes to 

 Cooper's Hill College. There can be no question that if the State had. 

 set an example of scientific forestry in even a portion of these areas, the 

 practice of sylviculture now throughout the country would have been 

 very different. 



16. I need not dwell on the fact that the conditions of land tenure in 

 the country have exercised an important influence upon the extent of 

 wood-planting in the country ; and they must always do so. " The oak 

 scorns to grow except on free land" is a saw that sums up pithily the 

 relationship between land-laws and woodlands in England. Copyholders 

 could hardly be expected to plant much timber when the lord of the 

 manor claimed the crop : and I believe it is possible in some counties to 

 trace the boundaries of copyholds by the entire absence of trees on one 

 side of a line and the luxuriant growth on the opposite side. The 

 intricacies of entail and the fact that life-renters had themselves to bear 



