The Woodlands of England. 
ii 7 
wood after wood on the same type of soil, it may be concluded 
with reasonable certainty that we have the natural type of woodland 
for the given type of soil in the given climate and geographical 
position. It is impossible to suppose that by chance or design the 
whole of the woods on a given rock over a very considerable extent 
of country have been replanted with the same species, other than 
the natural ones; especially when it is observed that on a neighbour¬ 
ing rock, producing a different kind of soil, quite a different type of 
wood is found, while in another part of the country, on a rock 
belonging to a different geological formation, but lithologically 
similar and producing the same kind of soil as the first one, the 
same type of wood occurs as in the first case. It is this actually 
observed constancy in the general type of woodland on a given type 
of soil over wide, and often widely separated, stretches of country, 
which leads to the conclusion that the greater part of the existing 
woodlands of England largely retain their original character. 
It might perhaps be urged that if some tree, other than the 
natural one, were found to be particularly suitable for a given kind 
of soil, this tree would, in course of time, come to be planted in all 
the woods on that soil. To such an argument we would make two 
rejoinders. First, there is no evidence whatever that such planting 
—so widespread and systematic as to lead on this theory to the 
observed results—has ever been carried out in this country. 
Secondly, as is well known to foresters, the majority of our native 
trees will flourish quite well, planted on a great variety of soils ; 
so that the supposed gradual selection of the economically best tree 
for a given soil, would not in fact work out so as to produce the 
actual distribution. The success of a tree-crop when planted on a 
given soil is of course quite a different thing from the natural 
dominance of a tree on the same soil. A species which may 
succeed perfectly well when planted on a certain soil, would have no 
chance of survival when placed in competition with the natural 
dominant. Hence the economically best native species is by no means 
necessarily the same thing as the natural dominant. Evidence of 
natural dominance is therefore of importance in this connexion ; 
and when such evidence is forthcoming and is associated with the 
uniformity above mentioned, we may conclude with perfect safety 
that the actually dominant tree is the natural primitive wood-forming 
tree on the soil in question, even if (as is very often the case) it is 
now regularly re-planted. 
Exceptional cases, it is true, occur. Thus the Scots pine is 
