26 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



followed Nature's order as closely as he could. His plan had 

 been to ventilate the woods by making roads, and cutting away 

 the undergrowth where the trees wanted air. He had always 

 thinned in May or June, and he never did the whole plantation 

 at once. He had taken away two out of every ten trees, or one- 

 fifth. After about twenty-five years other clearings were made 

 parallel to the roads, leaving twelve trees and taking three. By 

 that time the first cuts had nearly grown together, so that the 

 side branches were being filled in as they would be in an ordinary 

 plantation. Since then he had only taken out dead and sup- 

 pressed trees. By proceeding in this method, he believed a leaf 

 canopy could be sufficiently preserved. 



The Chaieman (Mr. W. T. Thiselton-Dyer) said that when 

 a body like the Royal Horticultural Society initiated a discussion 

 like this, it undoubtedly assumed a certain responsibility. It 

 was, of course, desirable to make use of every occasion to ventilate 

 a subject, but they must be careful, as a body with an established 

 reputation, that they did not lead the public to believe that they 

 had any very decided views upon the subject, because it was one 

 fraught with enormous difficulty. He must say that he was 

 much struck with the fact that Mr. Simpson really answered, 

 with almost destructive criticism, many of the suggestions raised 

 in his own paper. There seemed to be some confusion in the 

 matter. A landowner with an attractive estate planted trees for 

 various purposes— for shelter, or to a very large extent from con- 

 siderations of landscape effect. Of course, in so doing, he had 

 his reward in the pleasure he derived. Such actions ought not 

 to be regarded from a commercial point of view. There was, in 

 point of fact, very little in this country of what could be called 

 forestry. That arose from various considerations, and he would 

 not then trouble them with details. On the Continent, however, 

 forests to a large extent belonged to permanent bodies, such as 

 the communes in Switzerland, and other great corporate bodies. 

 Therefore such bodies could, if they liked, project the expenditure 

 and the expected profit into the next century. That was im- 

 possible for the private landowner in this country, therefore he 

 did not himself see how they could ever seriously tell the private 

 landowner that planting in the present state of things could be 

 regarded as a profitable, or even a possibly profitable, investment. 

 This matter was very carefully discussed some time ago before a 



