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THE

HADDON

EDITED

BY

THE MARQUESS OF GRANBY
AND MR.

GEORGE A. B. DEWAR

All vights reserved

Cake,

Vid, Pore

OUR FORESTS

AND

WOODLANDS

BY

Y
JOHN NISBET

«
AUTHOR OF

‘ BRITISH FOREST TREES,’ ¢ STUDIES IN FORESTRY,’ ETC.

LONDON
J. M. DENT & CO., ALDINE HOUSE
29 &' 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.

1900

7

Printed by BALLANTYNE, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press

PREFACE

‘FOR it has not been the late increase of
Shipping alone, the multiplication of Glass-works,
Iron-Furnaces, and the like, from whence this
im-politic diminution of our Timber has pro-
ceeded ; but from the disproportionate spreading
of Tillage, caused through that prodigious havock
made by such as lately professing themselves
against Root and Branch (either to be re-imbours’d
of their Aoly purchases, or for some other sordid
respect) were tempted, not only to fell and cut
down, but utterly to grub up, demolish, and
raze, as it were, all those many goodly Woods,
and Forests, which our more prudent Ancestors
left standing, for the Ornament, and service of
their Country... .

‘To attend now a spontaneous supply of
these decay’d Mazerials (which is the vulgar,
and natural way) would cost (besides the Jn-
closure) some entire Ages repose of the Plow.

vi PREFACE

Therefore, the most expeditious, and obvious
Method, would (doubtless) be by one of these
two ways, Sowing, or Planting. But, first, it
will be requisite to agree upon the Species; as
what Trees are likely to be of greatest Use, and
the fittest to be cultivated; and then, to con-
sider of the Manner how it may best be effected.
Truly, the waste, and destruction of our Woods,
has been so universal, that I conceive nothing
less then an universal Plantation of all the
sorts of Trees will supply, and will encounter
the defect; and therefore, I shall Aere adventure
to speak something in general of them a//;
though I chiefly insist upon the propagation of
such only as seem to be the most wanting, and
serviceable. . . .

‘Ispeak only here as a plain Husband-man,
and a simple Forester, out of the limits whereof
I hope I have not unpardonably transgress’d.’
—John Evelyn’s Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest
Trees, and the Propagation ‘of Timber, 1664 (pp.
I, 2, and 34).

CONTENTS

CHAP,

I, WOODS, FORESTS, AND FORESTRY IN ANCIENT

AND MODERN TIMES ; ‘ . .

Il, WOODS, FORESTS, AND FORESTRY IN ANCIENT

AND MODERN TIMES (continued) ‘
Ill. AMONG THE OAKS : ei : : .
IV. IN THE BEECHWOODS . -

V. THE OTHER HARDWOODS . .

VI. THE SOFTWOODS: ALDER, BIRCH, LIME, WIL-

LOWS, AND POPLARS : . .

VIL AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS, AND IN THE

LARCH PLANTATIONS. . ‘ ~
VII, HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES ,
IX. HIGHWOODS, COPSES, AND COPPICEWOODS
X. WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT .

XI. THE IMPROVEMENT OF BRITISH FORESTRY

INDEX . i ‘ : e : . .

vii

PAGE

130

147

174

200
235
255
294.
313

337

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Old Forest Oaks (Belvoir Estate). Photogravure . Frontispiece

An English Wood, mixed Forest (Belvoir Estate) .

An English Oakwood (Tring Park, Herts). Photogravure
A Beechwood on the Chiltern Hills (Tring Park, Herts) .
Natural Regeneration in Denny Old Wood (New Forest)
The Woods by the Waterside. Photogravure

Douglas Fir (Taymouth, Perthshire) .

Mature Scots Pine (Scone Estate). Photogravure

A Scottish Larch Wood (Drumboich, Lynedoch, Perth-

shire). Photogravure .
An English Larch Plantation (Tring Park, Herts)
Elms in an English Hedgerow. Photogravure
Old Park Oaks damaged by Rabbits ( Belvoir Estate)

Page
81

111
139
141
193
207

215

227
231
239
294

The Author desires to tender here his best thanks to the
Marguess or Gransy; fhe Eant of Mansrrecp; Mr.
Grorce Catt, Hythe, Hants; Mr, Ronert ANDERSON,
Cirencester; Mr. Ricnarpson Carr, Tring Parl, Herts;
and Mr, Starrorp Howarb, Commissioner of Woods and
Forests, for their kind assistance in supplying him with the
interesting and instructive photographs used to illustrate this
work,

OUR FORESTS AND
WOODLANDS

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CHAPTER I

Woods, Forests, &
Forestry in
Ancient & Modern Times

ONE has only to search back far enough in
order to arrive at a time when the greater
portion of the globe still bore its natural cover-
ing of primeval forest in some shape or another.
Except where the growth of trees was physically
impossible, either through the intense rigour of
arctic cold or the extreme aridity of tropical
and subtropical deserts, the early dawn of man’s
dominion over all the beasts of the earth must
have found the habitable portion of the earth’s
surface clad with tree-forest, varying in its

:

4 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

specific nature according to local climatic con-
ditions. Amid the marvellous luxuriance and
vegetative energy of tropical forests some woods,
almost evergreen in their wealth of foliage, are
to be found consisting of three tiers of trees
or shrubs, varying from about 20 to 40 up to
nearly 250 feet in height, while others, consist-
ing of characteristically deciduous trees, have an
underwood of lofty bamboos, which throw up,
within their annual growing period of about five
months, huge culms sometimes attaining a height
of over 100 feet. Within the temperate zones
both the variety of trees and the luxuriance of
their growth become very noticeably less. To-
wards the polar regions, and at the higher eleva-
tions of lofty mountain ranges, the natural
covering of forest consists mainly of Pines and
Firs, Birches, Maple, and similar hardy kinds of
trees. Even there, these all become of a dwarfish
and slow-growing habit, in marked contrast with
their dimensions and rate of growth under more
favourable conditions as to climate. In every con-
ceivable respect the vegetation and the habit of
growth found towards the polar limits of tree-forest
form the very antithesis of what obtains in the

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 5

hot, moist tracts densely covered with evergreen
tropical jungle. These two form, indeed, one of
the exceptional extremes which never meet.

Before man could acquire his dominion over
the beasts of the field, he had of course first of
all to form his fields by clearance of the natural
forests. And this is a process which we still
can see in practical working in various parts of
the world. The Canadian backwoodsman and
the Australian squatter are doing in temperate
regions much the same as the hill-tribes of
thickly-wooded parts of India and Burma, in
clearing away ‘the forest primeval’ for agri-
cultural or pastoral occupation. It was ever
thus, probably from long before the days when
the Psalmist sang that ‘a man was famous
according as he had lifted up axes upon the
thick trees’; and it was thus also in England,
no doubt, long before the historic epoch.

During the early days of the historic period,
when Caractacus and Boadicea vainly tried to
resist the legions of Rome, Britain was densely
wooded. Cesar, in his Commentaries, describes
the ancient Britons as a true forest people, whose
military tactics consisted in retreating hastily to

6 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

the depths of the woods after delivering an un-
successful attack, and in hampering his line of
march by blocking the rough tracks with felled
trees. The villages, or ‘towns’ as both Cesar
and Strabo called them, were merely clusters of
houses grouped together for mutual assistance
and defence within large clearances made in the
forest. "They were protected by ramp and ditch,
as well as by a stout fence formed by inter-
weaving branches of thorny trees and shrubs and
strengthened with stakes.

It is curious and interesting to note conditions
as to tactics and village defence obtaining through-
out Upper Burma quite recently almost exactly
similar to those which prevailed in Britain about
nineteen centuries ago.

At that time the British woods consisted of
Beech, Oak, Scots Pine, Birch, Ash, Scots Elm,
Mountain Ash, Sallow, Aspen, Alder, and Yew,
together with smaller trees and shrubs like Haw-
thorn, Juniper, Holly, and Gorse. To the Romans
we owe the English Elm, Lime, Chestnut, Plane,
Poplar, Walnut, and many other trees of the
garden and the orchard, which have never become
thoroughly naturalised throughout the woodlands.

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 7

Somewhat later, during the Saxon and Danish
periods, Britain was not only still thickly tree-
clad, but the then scanty population was mainly
dependent on the woodlands for many kinds of
food. Little attention was at that time paid
to the enclosure or improvement of land. The
woods abounded with game; and the chase,
enjoyed in common, formed one of the chief
means of subsistence.

When husbandry began to receive some little
care and attention under later Saxon rule, lands
were gradually enclosed and improved for better
cultivation; while the wild animals of the woods,
destructive to tillage crops, were driven away
from such enclosures and confined, so far as
possible, within the depths of the forests. As
these recesses of the wilder tracts had never
been taken into account in the early clearance
of woodland for cultivation, they gradually be-
came something like sanctuaries for the wild
beasts; and, naturally, a gradual evolution took
place from that condition to absolute reservation
for the profit and amusement of the great thanes
and earls, and finally for the recreation of the
sovereign himself. But every freeholder still

8 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

had the right of the chase upon his own land,
though forbidden to follow it into or upon the
king’s woods. Both the actual customs and
the reputed laws of Canute, as well as the cus-
toms in the time of Edward the Confessor, give
evidence that such was the case, and in all prob-
ability these ancient customs were based upon
older Scandinavian practices and laws.

From the original folk-land held in common
the royal demesnes and forests of England seem
to have gradually sprung up as the king became
more fully representative of his nation. The
process of formation of ‘King’s Land’ and ‘King’s
Wood’ before Domesday is somewhat obscure.
All that seems clear is that the forests were
considered to be a special royal possession, and
that the higher chase was reserved for the king,
while the lower could be enjoyed by the holder
of the land.

Thus, in England, the royal appropriation of
large tracts of land, and especially of woodlands,
practically as Forests, seems to have taken place
as early as the period of the Heptarchy. The
commencement was made when each petty local
chief or princeling formed his demesne; and

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 9

when kings were at last evolved and one ulti-
mately obtained the sovereignty, he found him-
self the overlord of many forests scattered
throughout different parts of England.

There is a sort of general popular opinion
that the introduction of forest laws into Britain
only took place with the advent of the Normans,
but this is probably due to the fact that the
laws only became harshly stringent and cruel
under Norman rule. King Ine’s laws are said
to date back as far as a.p. 690, but the first
reputed regular Statute relating to forests in
England is the Norman forgery known as the
Charta Canuti, or Charter of Canute the Dane,
said to have been granted at a Parliament held
at Winchester in a.p. 1016.

Lord Coke’s suspicions as to the authenticity
of Canute’s Statute have been shown by Stubbs
and Liebermann to be well founded. It seems to
have been a forgery intended to make the harsh
and cruel Norman laws seem less of an innovation
than they really were. There was, however, this
great difference, that previous to the Norman Con-
quest in 1066 the forests were never held in such
strict veneration, nor governed by such savage laws,

Missing Page

Missing Page

12 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

enough, or politic enough, to bestow it. Thus,
while under the Saxon kings there had been two
chases, the higher being reserved for the king,
and the lower enjoyed by the landholder, the
Normans at once seized and kept to themselves
all the pursuit of game.

In Anglo-Saxon times the chief use of the
woodlands, except for hunting, fuel, and wood
for building, was for the pannage of pigs. Large
herds of swine were driven into the woods to
fatten on the mast of the beech-tree and the
acorns of the oak-groves. Before the end of the
seventh century (King Ine’s laws, a.p. 690) the
value of a tree was estimated by the number of
swine that could find shelter under it, and penal-
ties were imposed on the burning of trees lest
the woods should be destroyed by fire. Under
Canute’s supposititious laws the fine for destroy-
ing a holly-tree, or other tree whose fruit the
beasts ate, was twenty shillings, besides other
forfeiture, and even the cutting of brushwood
within the royal forests was forbidden. In
Domesday Book land is often described as being
a ‘wood of so many pigs.’

At the time of the Conquest the forests or

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 13

woodlands regarded as ‘royal hunting grounds’
(silva regis) appear to have been under the
administration of four thanes or Poegend in each
province, while other four Lespegend or thanes
of lower rank ranged the forests in charge of
‘vert and venison,’ the woodlands and the
animals of the chase. Under each of these again
were two woodmen or foresters of lower rank
called Tinemen, who performed the more servile
work of watchers and keepers. All of these
officials were mounted and armed. The thanes
administered justice and disciplined their subor-
dinates, but were answerable only to the king,
much in the same way as the Commissioners of
Woods and Forests are now responsible to Parlia-
ment. Deer, wild cattle, hares, and rabbits were
enclosed, but all men were allowed to shoot wild
boars, wolves, and foxes outside the enclosures.
Villeins and burghers were liable for the service
of enclosure and stalling the big game, and for
this purpose every two villeins had to keep a dog.

One of the first steps taken by William I.
after the Conquest was to reserve to the Crown
all the old folk-land remaining unenclosed, and
the crown lands were further increased by the

14 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

confiscation of the property of those who had
fought unsuccessfully, under King Harold, against
the Normans at the battle of Hastings.

The new doctrine was also at the same time
introduced, that hunting was a pastime of kings,
and that the right of pursuing and taking beasts
of chase and venery, and all other animals
accounted as game, belonged only to the king,
or to such alone as were authorised by him to
exercise a privilege in this respect. All such
animals were held to be bona vacantia or ‘ owner-
less property,’ and therefore belonged to the king
by royal prerogative. Thus, under the principles
of the feudal law, the king had the right of pur-
suit and capture anywhere, while the common
law was manipulated by forgery of the supposi-
titious charter of Canute in such a way as to
convey a sole and exclusive right in them to
the king and to persons authorised by him.

This usurpation of presumed royal rights under
English common law and the introduction of
feudal principles were exercised with ruthless
rigour and cruel harshness. Not only did the
ancient royal woodlands become jealously-pre-
served crown forests, but large tracts of land

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 15

were also placed under ban and reserved as royal
hunting grounds, within which, under colour of
Forest Law, horrible tyranny and oppression were
exercised upon the Saxon villeins forming the
rural population.

One of the most famous of the ancient forests
was in Hampshire, near the borders of what had
originally been known as the Ytene forest ( Ychene,
Eithin, ‘furze’). Between the time of Edward
the Confessor (1042-1066) and the survey for
Domesday Book at least 17,000 acres were
afforested, and in making the New Forest
William I. afforested manors, large portions of
which were already forest. Local names end-
ing in ham, ton, and tune are the sole remaining
traces distinguishing the sites of what were once
Saxon manors or villages.

William the Conqueror’s action in ‘afforest-
ing’ the New Forest in 1079 was certainly
just about as ruthless as could well have been,
but the highly-coloured versions of it recorded
by monkish historians cannot be accepted as
trustworthy. The wholesale destruction of
thirty-six parish churches, or more, together

1 See Robert Mudie’s ‘‘ Hampshire” on this matter.—Eps.

16 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

with the houses and possessions of so many
townships, to make them habitations for wild
beasts, seems a gross exaggeration, although the
afforestation was assuredly carried out without
any particular regard to the feelings of the
local population. The almost barren condition
of many portions of the poor, sandy soil make
it extremely improbable that this part of Hamp-
shire could ever have been a thickly-populated
and richly-cultivated tract; and this actual physi-
cal evidence must be weighed against the accusa-
tions of the monkish records. Naturally, the
abbots and monks were not favourably inclined
to the Norman conquerors, who drove them forth
from their churches and monasteries. Hence a
true, dispassionate, unprejudiced account of the
royal proceedings could not be expected from
them; for they were men at heart, though
monks in habit.

Many of the wooded tracts in that part of
Hampshire had previously been appropriated by
the Crown in the earlier feudal times, and were
still in its possession; and when the reserved
area was enlarged and formed into one great
compact block, it was given the name of the

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 17

New Forest. It was not entirely new afforesta-
tion over a large portion of a county where
no royal forests had previously existed. These
conditions being borne in mind, one must doubt
the evidence of Walter Mapes, chaplain to
Henry II., when he wrote that the ‘Conqueror
took away much land from God and men, and
converted it to the use of wild beasts, and the
sport of his dogs; for which he demolished
thirty-six churches, and exterminated the inhabi-
tants.. He merely reproduced in the vulgar
tongue what Henry of Huntingdon had written
shortly before in Latin; then, by the time that
Joannes Brompton wrote his Chronicles in the
reign of Edward III., the monkish version had
become an article of firm belief. It is not
difficult to picture the state of affairs which
then existed. Resolved to seize and to hold all
rights of the Chase as a royal monopoly and
prerogative, William I. still felt reluctant to
drive the recently-conquered Saxon race to the
extremest verge of anger and to the hatred
born of despair; so he caused the supposititious
Forest Laws of Canute to be forged, and merely

seemed to enforce them somewhat more strictly
B

18 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

than had yet been the case since they were
said to have been passed in Parliament in
A.D. 1016. He therefore, as a matter of wise
policy, passed nothing frankly in the shape of
a new enactment during his reign; and this
policy was followed by his immediate successor,
William Rufus. No new Forest Laws were
enacted until the Charta de Foresta, granted in
1217, and the later and more important charter
in 1225, both of which were passed in the early
part of the reign of Henry III. (1216-1272),
while he was still a minor.

Under these laws then applied, the penalty
for killing a stag or ‘royal beast” within the
bounds of a royal forest were almost as great
as those exacted for destroying the life of a
human being. It cost a freeman his freedom,
an unfree man his liberty, and a bondman his
life. Even to chase a stag so as to cause it
to pant and be out of breath meant loss of
liberty to a freeman for one year, and to an
unfree man for two years, while a bondman
was outlawed, and became what was then called
‘a friendless man.’ The only sort of royal
clemency, afterwards practically ignored, was that

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 19

section in which Canute is made to say, ‘I will
that every freeman may take his own vert, or
venison, or hunting, that he can get upon his own
ground, or in his own fields, being out of my
Chase; and let all men refrain from my venery
in every place where I will have the same.’

So insupportable became these cruel hardships
under the Forest Laws, that even the Norman
barons, as well as those Englishmen who still
retained some of their ancestral lands, became
zealous for their relaxation and amendment.
Whereas William I. punished offences against
them with mutilation, instead of by the fine for-
merly imposed, William II. increased the areas
reserved as royal forests, and exacted the death
penalty, sometimes even against Norman barons
of high rank, though united to him by ties of
blood. So oppressively were the laws adminis-
tered and exceeded during the reign of William
Rufus, that his detestable tyranny lived long in
the remembrance of the people, while the circum-
stances of his tragic death in the New Forest
were deemed the special punishment of Heaven.

So much so was this the case that his son and
successor, Henry I., relaxed these Norman Forest

20 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

Laws, and disafforested certain tracts in order to
ingratiate himself with the people. One of his
acts of this sort was to confirm by charter an
ancient privilege of the citizens of London with
regard to coursing in Middlesex, Surrey, and
Wiltshire. Later on, however, Henry showed
the same tendency to severity, and the same
desire to keep to himself the right of hunting
throughout the kingdom as his father and grand-
father had done. He added large tracts to the
royal afforestations previously made by these
sovereigns. Accordingly, when his nephew,
Stephen, came to the throne he was likewise in
his turn full of concessions, and anxious to con-
ciliate the barons and the people at large. At
his first great Council he granted a charter pro-
mising disafforestation of all tracts afforested by
Henry, but he failed to keep this promise, and
even seized again the forests made by William
II. which Henry had given up.

During the unsettled times of Henry and
Stephen many encroachments and trespasses were
made in the king’s forests, but from the accession
of Henry II., the first of the Plantagenet line, the
Forest Laws and their administration occupied an

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 21

important and clearly-defined position side by side
with the common law. Special justices were ap-
pointed to accompany the circuits of the ‘ Justices
in Eyre,’ of whom more will shortly be said.
After the Council of Clarendon a general visitation
of the whole country was made by two Justices in
1166. In 1175 Henry made a personal visita-
tion of his forests in Nottinghamshire, and even
exacted large fines for the destruction of vert
and venison which he had himself authorised
during the then recent time of war. He was inevil
temper about his forests, and just before this
shameless demand he hanged four knights at
Lichfield who had slain one of his foresters, no
doubt after much oppression and provocation.

If Richard Coeur-de-Lion had not spent most
of his reign in crusading, history would probably
have had much to say about a recrudescence of
savagery in the administration of the Forest
Laws. He loved the chase, and revived the
older laws, though in a somewhat relaxed form ;
but he had the merit of ordering the punishment
of forest offences by fine only, in place of such
barbarous mutilations as loss of eyes and cut-
ting off of hands and feet. Even the clergy, un-

22 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

touched by the Common Law, were made subject
to Forest Law, and the foresters were ordered
not to hesitate in laying hands on them if found
trespassing. Except for fuel no man could cut
anything in his own woods forming part of
a forest, and even trees for fuel had to be cut
in view of the forester. When King John, ten
years later, came to the throne, however, evil
days again darkened the land and embittered the
lives of the nobles and the people. His reckless
procedure amounted almost to insanity. He
afforested the whole of Essex except one ‘ Hun-
dred,’ while all Cornwall, one of the least wooded
counties, was also put under the Forest Laws. In-
deed this was one, and not the least, of the acts of
misgovernment which banded the nobles together
for the protection of their own interests and the
championship of the rights of the people, and
resulted in the granting of Magna Charta in
1215, the great charter of the rights and liberties
of English subjects. In this, for the first time,
the most oppressive and cruel of the Forest Laws
were practically repealed.

At the accession of Henry III., in 1216, forest
legislation seems to have occupied a prominent

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 23

place in the attention of the landed proprietors.
The old ruse of William the Conqueror in forging
the laws of Canute was apparently again tried in
the so-called laws of Edward the Confessor, pur-
porting to protect public as well as royal rights.
The first genuine Forest Charter, however, is that
issued in the boy king’s name by the Regent, the
Earl of Pembroke, in November 1217. Under
this, as under the later charter of 1225, all
lands afforested by Richard I. or Henry I.
were declared to be disafforested, except the
desmesne woods of the Crown; while the affores-
tations made by Henry II. were to be annulled
where they could be shown to be to the damage
of the owners of the woods. Provisions were also
made that no person’s life or limb should in
future be forfeited for taking of the king’s deer,
but that a fine should merely be exacted, failing
payment of which the offender should be impri-
soned for a year and a day. Then he was to find
sureties for future good behaviour, and in default
of this he was to be banished from England.

Any spiritual or lay lord was, when passing
through a forest, free to take two beasts in view
of the forester, or should sound a horn, if no

24 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

forester were present, to show that theft was not
being committed. It removed many of the fla-
grant abuses under which the people had suffered
so heavily throughout the whole of the hundred
and fifty years of Norman rule. Since the early
days of Henry II. the forest administration had
occupied a definite and important position side by
side with the common law. This charter was to
the forest administration very much what Magna
Charta was to the constitution at large. In both
cases rights were defined and liberties assured,
thus making the future happier and more secure
than the past had been.

In the following year (1218) a perambulation
or Pourallee of the royal forests was made to de-
termine once and for ever their true extent and
boundaries ; and the lands thus disafforested were
classed as Purlieu. These were ‘clear places’ or
tracts adjoining the forest, and once forming part
of it, which were bounded by immovable marks
noted on the record of the perambulation. In
that same year an ordinance was made restricting
the king from making any grants of woodland in
perpetuity till he came of age in 1227. When
he did come of age, it may be remarked, as illus-

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 25

trative of royal procedure in those early days, that
this ordinance was put forward as invalidating all
previous grants unless renewed on payment.
Then again the barons had to make a firm stand
against the tendency to encroachment shown by
the king, who had once more afforested lands that
had been disafforested by perambulation, and had
also made warrens in tracts disafforested by charter.
The most famous and valuable charter of
liberty in this respect was, however, the cele-
brated Charta de Foresta. of 1225, granted in the
ninth year of the reign of Henry III., when he
was still only eighteen years of age and under
regency ; and perhaps the most important portion
of it was contained in the opening words of the
tenth section, ‘ No man from henceforth shall lose
neither Life nor Member for killing our Deer.’
From the time when William I. caused the
so-called laws of Canute to be forged down to
the Forest Charter of 1217, the kings had claimed
the right of forming a royal forest wherever they
liked. ‘What I wish, I will have,’ was the law
in practice. The king merely issued a commis-
sion under his great seal, setting forth that his
royal pleasure was to make a forest in any given

26 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

locality, and ordering a perambulation of the
same to be carried out. This perambulation
being returned, certified, and recorded, a writ was
issued to the local sheriff, ordering proclamation
throughout the county that the land in question
had been afforested, and that no one might hence-
forth hunt there. Until forest officers were ap-
pointed by the king, however, the tract remained
only a Chase (Chaceus), or sanctuary for beasts of
venery and other wild animals. As such the
right of hunting there could be conferred on sub-
jects, whereas it was only a Forest (Foresta) when
retained by the king for his own use and recrea-
tion. A Forest differed from a Chase in the three
matters of having particular laws, certain officers,
and particular courts for executing these laws;
a Chase was usually smaller than a Forest. A
Park (Parcus) was also a place of sanctuary for
wild beasts of all descriptions, but it differed from
a Chase in being enclosed, while it was usually
smaller in extent. If left open in place of being
kept properly enclosed, it was liable to seizure by
the king as a free chase. Hence, when such
tracts or portions of chases were granted to
subjects, license to impark was given at the same

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 27

time. There seems to be no record as to the
place where, or date when, the first park was
formed; but Domesday Book mentions sixteen
subjects who then held parks. From the time of
Edward I. onwards most great men had parks
and chases, while licenses to impark are frequently
recorded in the Patent Rolls. Portions of royal
forests could be granted to subjects by letters-
patent, but only the king could hold a forest, as
he alone could appoint a ‘ Chief Justice in Eyre,’
an officer essential to the definition of the land
as Forest. When portions of forest were thus
granted, all the officers remained except the
Justice in Eyre. In ancient law books the Chief
Justices in Eyre were called fusticiarii [tinerantes,
or judges holding a sort of roving commission,
the English name being derived from the old
French Erre, or Ir, ‘to go.’ This high function-
ary can be traced back to the time of Henry II.
It was considered an office of such great trust and
dignity, and of such high honour and authority,
that it was always filled by a peer of the realm,
who was also a Privy Councillor. Originally there
were three such justices for different parts of the
kingdom, who had to make tours through their

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32, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

give judgment or assess any fines. The jury
empanelled before the Fustice Seat consisted of
eighteen, twenty, or twenty-four men chosen from
among the freeholders and others present. Here,
too, all manner of offences were adjudicated on,
from offences against vert and venison, or ex-
tortions by the forest officers, down to mis-
behaviour and abusive words. One Sir Charles
Howard was even fined one hundred pounds, and
was committed until he paid them, for saying that
proceedings had been carried against him with a
high hand in respect of certain trees he had
felled, and that he would have the matter heard
in another place.

Forty days’ notice had to be given before the
Fustice Seat was held in every third year. Being
a Court of Record, it could adjudge both fine
and imprisonment. If any grave matter were
affected by a dubious point in forest law, the
Justice in Eyre could refer the business to the
Court of King’s Bench at Westminster, and his
proceedings could only be removed, or any mis-
carriage of justice rectified and redressed, by writ
of error into the same high court.

Here also, at the Justice Seat, such inhabitants

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 33

of the forest as had attained the age of twelve
years had to take their oath of allegiance in the
following ancient rhyme :—

“ You shall true Liege-man be,
Unto the King’s Majestie:
Unto the Beasts of the Forest you shall no hurt do,
Nor to anything that doth belong thereto :
The Offences of others you shall not conceal,
But, to the utmost of your Power, you shall them reveal
Unto the Officers of the Forest,
Or to them who may see them redrest :
All these things you shall see done,
So help you God at his Holy Doom.”

CHAPTER II

Woods, Forests,
& Forestry in Ancient &
Modern Times

eee
THE Charta de Foresta, passed in the ninth year
of Henry III.’s reign, in supersession of the
statute issued eight years before by the Regent,
William Marschall, Earl of Pembroke, which
gave confirmation of the great charters of liberty
wrung from King John, forms, like these, one
of the most famous charters in English history.
In addition to the leading provisions, which
have already been sketched, it regulated the hold-
ing of the Swainmote; it prescribed, with due
limitations, the duties and powers of certain
officers of the forest, and it defined how action

should lie with regard to the offences of Pur-
34

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 35

presture, Waste, and Assart. Purprestre, from the
old French Pourpris, ‘a taking for oneself, and
enclosing,’ was trespass or wrongful encroach-
ment by enclosure or usage. Anything in the
shape of building, enclosure, or exercising any
liberty or privilege without special warrant to
do so was, as Manwood, the great historian of
old English forest laws, says, a grave offence, for
‘the Law indendeth a very grievous Fine should
be set on him who makes a Purprestre on the
king’s lands.” A man might not even build
a dwelling-house for himself on his own free
land within the forest unless he had previously
obtained the requisite special license. Waste
included everything done in the forest which
tended to damage or destroy the coverts and
pastures for the deer and other game. A free-
holder within the forest could not even cut down
any thick covert, or fell trees in his own woods,
without either obtaining a license from the Chief
Justice in Eyre, or else performing the act in view
of the king’s forester. Even ploughing a meadow
without previous permission was ‘waste’; and
he who committed waste was fined by the Chief
Justice, the place wasted being seized for the

36 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

use of the king till the fine was paid. Assart,
from Assartir, or Essarter, ‘to grub up, make
plain,’ was the offence of destroying any covert
by rooting it up and making it plain ground.
If any dweller within the forest dared to clear
his own freehold land of trees and shrubs for
agricultural or pastural purposes he was guilty
of Assart of the forest, and could be fined and
committed to prison till the fine had been paid
to the king. Thus a Waste merely damaged the
woods and coverts, while an ssart and a Pur-
prestre actually destroyed portions of them, and
they were therefore considered the more grievous
offences. Even barons of high degree had to
give heed to the position into which they some-
times drifted on account of waste. In the Pipe
Rolls whole counties were placed in default for
forest offences. Once on the eve of a triennial
Regard or survey of the royal forests the Earl
of Leicester procured, by special writ of the
king, exemption from the fines to which he
might be found liable for Waste; and when
his record was read in public at the court ‘all
were amazed and astonished, saying, ‘‘ Does not

se

this earl weaken our liberty?

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 37

The chief local officers of the forests were the
Stewards, Verderers, Foresters, Regarders, Agistors,
and Woodwards. The Verderers (Virtdarit) were
the judicial officers of the forest, sworn to keep the
assizes and laws, and to receive and enrol present-
ments and attachments regarding all manner of tres-
pass or of offence against vert and venison. ‘They
were Judges of Record in the Swainmote, hearing
the complaints of the Foresters, and keeping the
rolls of matters to come before the Justice in Eyre ;
and they had also to decide in each case whether
the accused should be released at large (main-
prise), or only on bail till the day of trial. The
Verderers were expected to be men learned in
the forest law, but they were provided with a
more learned Steward or technical adviser to assist
them in coming to proper decisions as to bailable
and non-bailable offences. There were usually
four Verderers for each forest, chosen from among
the esquires and men of good estate.

The Foresters (Forestarii) were the officers
sworn to preserve the vert and venison within
the forest, who were appointed either by letters-
patent, or else by paying to the king a fee-farm
rent for their office, which looks very suggestive of

38 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

there having been many illegal pickings to be made
indirectly out of the appointment. But, apart
from that, it was an office of high degree, usually
held by great noblemen. Some held office for
life, others only during the royal pleasure. Their
duties were to preserve and watch over the vert
and venison, and to attach offenders and present
them before the forest courts. They could give
no license to any one to hunt or hawk, nor could
they, except under lawful warrant, themselves
kill a deer in the forest without risking forfeiture
of office. Every forester was bound to appear at
the Justice Seat, and when he was called he had
to present his horn upon his knees to the Justice
in Eyre, who handed it to the marshal, and a
fee of 6s. 8d. had to be paid before the horn
was returned to its owner. A woman might
be a forester, the husband acting for her as
forester-in-fee. If he found any man in the
forest with greyhound or bow and arrows intend-
ing to hunt, the forester could arrest and im-
prison him, and he might pursue him within view
out of the forest. It was doubtless profitable to
give any one encountered in the forest the benefit
of the doubt; for, before the Charta de Foresta,

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 39

there was a general complaint that the foresters
oppressed and extorted money from the people,
not only directly, but also by appointing an un-
necessary number of walkers and under-keepers,
who, receiving no payment, lived only by extor-
tion. Freeholders and those exercising rights
of common had hay, corn, lambs, pigs, and the
like, as well as money, wrung from them clan-
destinely, and this was a serious aggravation of
forest laws savage and brutal enough in them-
selves. Extortion of this sort had subsequently
to be prohibited by statute, as also the custom
of illicit Scotale, or extortion ‘colore Officii, by
keeping of an ale-house or the sale of drink by
any officer of the forest, where men were induced
to go and spend their money in order to avert
the displeasure of the official, The Swainmote
was charged to inquire into cases of unlawful
Scotale, and to punish and dismiss from office any
forester found guilty of this offence. Although
prohibited from such extortion ‘by colour of
his office,’ yet he was entitled to various benefits
or lawful Scotale ‘by virtue of office’; for he had
the right of making collections by tenure, grant,
and prescription. Thus he received five shillings

40 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

or one sheep or lamb every year from each land-
holder in the forest, and a certain quantity of
oats or corn from each one renting land. He
could also claim a subsistence allowance of three-
halfpence a day, and was entitled to all the wind-
fall and dead wood, to the browse-wood felled in
winter for feeding the deer, and to the shoulders
and skin of all deer killed in his beat.

The Regarders (Regardatores) were appointed
during the reign of Henry II. to take the place
of the Lespegend or thanes of lesser degree in
ancient times charged with the care of vert and
venison under the forged charter of Canute.
The older office having apparently fallen into de-
suetude, the woods got into bad condition, and
the number of deer became greatly diminished ;
so Regarders were appointed to keep the foresters
up to their work, and to improve matters gene-
rally by ‘seeing to” the preservation of vert and
venison. At first the office was only conferred
on knights, though subsequently it could be
filled by any good and lawful man named thereto
by the king. There were twelve of them for
each forest. If any of these fell sick or died,
the number had at once to be made up to twelve,

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 41

otherwise there could not be any Regard made
in the forest. Like a jury at common law, they
had all twelve to be unanimous in certifying their
verdict or ‘presentment,’ else it was invalid.
Regarders were appointed either for life or in
fee, by grant of royal letters-patent; or they
might be made, during the king’s pleasure, by
the Justice in Eyre, or by the king’s writ to the
sheriff; while in case of absence of one of the
twelve from a Swainmote the Justice in Eyre could
make nomination pro hdc vice. When a Regard
of the forest or Visitatio nemorum was ordered
once every third year by issue of the king’s writ to
the sheriff, it was made by the Regarders accom-
panying the Foresters and Woodwards. They
surveyed all the Wastes, Assarts, and Purprestres
and entered them on rolls, examined the woods,
hedges, fences, and fellings, inspected mines and
forges, and made inquiries regarding those who
had bows, arrows, hounds, &c., for chasing and
killing the deer. This roll was brought to the
Court of Attachment or the Swainmote, and was
afterwards presented at the next Justice Seat.
They had therefore the fourfold duties of seeing,
inquiring, enrolling, and certifying concerning

42 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

forest offences, and the general administration of
the royal forests.

At the time a Regard was made particular in-
quiry was held into the number of dogs kept, and
as to whether the owners of mastiffs had complied
with the law as to ‘expeditation’ or mutilation
of the forefeet to prevent them chasing the deer ;
and they had to see this barbarous operation
performed, when necessary. Every farmer and
freeholder dwelling in a forest was allowed to keep
a mastiff, but it had to be expeditated or lamed
by maiming. This ‘/aming of dogs’ was more
anciently called hambling, hoxing, or hock-sinewing,
when the back sinew was cut so as to lame them
in the hind-quarters; but King Henry II. intro-
duced the system of ‘ expeditating’ their forefeet.
The law declared that three claws of a forefoot
were to be cut off by the skin; and this was
done by making the poor dog set one of his
fore-feet upon a block of wood a foot square and
eight inches thick, setting a chisel of two inches
broad upon the three claws of the foot, and
striking them off at a blow. None but expedi-
tated mastiffs and little dogs might be kept
within the forest; unmaimed mastiffs, grey-

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 43

hounds, and spaniels could only be kept under
warrant from the king or his Chief Justice in
Fyre.

Agistors (Agistores), from agito, to ‘drive’
or ‘feed,’ were the four officers appointed by
royal letters-patent, who took beasts to pasture
within the forest where there was any pannage.
They also noted trespass done by cattle and
made presentments about the same, looked after
demesne woods and other lands enclosed, and
received the cattle and payments of those living
in the forest who had right of common on the
unenclosed parts. They had to keep an account
of all Agistments, whether of feeding cattle, &c.,
with herbage or with mast, and had to deliver
the same to the Justice in Eyre at each Justice
Seat.

The Woodward (Woodwardus) was a subordi-
nate officer appointed at a much later date, and
charged solely with looking after the woods or
vert. The office of a Woodward and the bark
of trees felled in the forest were claimed and
adjudged as belonging to a manor. The Wood-
ward had to appear at every Court of Attach-
ment, and there present all offences committed

44 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

in his beat; he had also to attend each Justice
Seat, and, if called, had to present his hatchet
to the Justice in Eyre. If a subject had any
wood in a forest and his Woodward neglected
to appear at the Justice Seat, the wood could
be seized for the king till the owner paid a
fine; and it was a finable offence if the owner
of woods within a royal forest appointed a Wood-
ward to look after them where there had been
no such office before.

During the time of Edward I. several im-
portant statutes and ordinances were passed
dealing with forest law. Apparently the roll
of offences in forests, chases, and warrens had
grown to be very heavy, for in 1275 legisla-
tion took place against Trespassers in Parks
and Ponds, and in 1278 the Assiza et Consuetu-
dines Foreste were promulgated, prescribing more
clearly than previously the action to be taken and
the penalties to be incurred for certain offences
committed within the forests. It affirmed that
‘all trees,’ whether fruit-bearing or not, ‘and an
ash if it be old,’ were vert, and therefore possessed
by the king, while it was made penal to fell
an oak even within the demesne wood if within

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 45

the Regard of the forest. One section shows
that certain persons could ‘claim to have privi-
leges, as dogs unlamed and greyhounds, within
the bounds of the forest,’ but the only specific
authority given was that ‘It is lawful for the
Abbot of the borough of St. Peter to hunt,
and to take hares, foxes, and martens, within
the bounds of the Forest, and to have unlamed
dogs, because he hath sufficient warrant there-
unto.” Edward seems, however, to have been a
sufficiently-enlightened monarch to have learned
in time that the forest laws were oppressive and
vexatious both to the nobles and to the smaller
landowners, as well as to the rural population
generally. Hence, when they clamoured for
perambulations and fixation of the true boun-
daries of the royal forests, Edward found it
politic to accede to their request. And he was
by no means loath to earn an honest penny by
sale of clemency in this respect; so, in 1299,
when anxious to raise money for prosecuting
his war in France, he gave formal confirmation
of Magna Charta and the great Charta de Foresta
of 1225. In doing this he contrived to slip in
a little phrase, ‘without prejudice to the right

46 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

of the crown,’ which was not in the original;
but the innovation was soon discovered, and a
fresh confirmation was demanded, to be shortly
afterwards granted.

Previous to this, however, in 1293, a statute,
known as that ‘concerning Malefactors in Forests
and Parks, had been issued to strengthen the
hands of Foresters and of their subordinates in
dealing with those found committing forest
offences; so that it seems clear Edward might
have been as bad as the Norman kings but for
the pressure exerted upon him by the nation
at large.

In consequence of delay in carrying out the
disafforestations promised in 1299, the Parlia-
ment held in 1300 passed twenty ‘ Articles anent
the Charters’ (4rticuli super Cartas), ordering
infringements of them to be inquired into, and
severe measures to be taken with regard to forest
administration. A perambulation was accord-
ingly held in 1301, and Edward again confirmed
the charters in the Parliament held at Lincoln.
In 1304, two statutes were wrung from him;
but, in 1305, he obtained absolution from his
oath from Pope Clement V., and used this to

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 47

evade, although he dared not formally renounce,
the forest articles he had been compelled to
grant since 1299.

But the people still groaned under the op-
pressions of the forest laws and the Foresters.
Complaints were general that in place of accusa-
tions being properly made, the ‘ presentments’
often took place at the instance of Verderers and
Foresters, with the design of extorting money, and
that the number of officers maintained in the
forests was excessive, while they lived by illegal
traffic in wood and game. At length the cry
which went up became so loud that it had to
be satisfied by legislation, and thus was secured
the Forest Ordinance passed in 1306. This short
ordinance of six sections only was much to the
point. It contained many useful regulations
with regard to the proceedings at the forest
courts. ‘Trespassers were ordered to be presented
to the next Swainmote; the Verderers were to
be chosen by the freeholders, and appointed by
the king’s writ; and all offences of the forest
officers, whether against the king or the people,
were ordered to be presented, tried, and punished.
It also removed certain grievances of the common

48 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

people suffered at the hands of the nobles. The
perambulations of the forests had thrown many
disafforested lands into the hands of certain
barons, who gained personally; but they ground
down their tenants so much, that the latter
wished their lands to become part and parcel
of the royal forest again, in order to secure their
former rights of pasture and common; and this
was secured to them, if they wished such a
privilege, under the new ordinance.

There was no fresh legislation during Edward
II.’s reign; but as soon as Edward III. ascended
the throne, in 1327, pressure was again success-
fully applied in amending the still vexatious
laws. The statute then passed regulated still
more definitely the procedure at the Swainmote,
and ordained ‘that henceforth no Man shall be
taken nor imprisoned for Vert or Venison, unless
he be taken with the manner, or manouvre, that
is to say, as regards Vert, either in cutting or
carrying it away, and as to Venison, in being
taken in Stable-stand, Dog-draw, Bloody-hand, or
Back-bear, as the various terms were for lying
in wait for, chasing, breaking up, and carrying
off the royal deer. Another statute, also passed

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 49

during that same year, permitted ‘Every Man
that hath any Wood within the Forest, may
take House-boot and Hay-boot within his said
wood, without being attached for the same by
any Officer of the Forest, so that he do it in
View of the Foresters.’

And yet a third statute of that first year of
reign ordained that if the Chief Warden of a
forest, the later development of the ancient
Forester, refused to bail an offender in vert or
venison, a writ of Chancery could be obtained
directing this; and if the warden still declined to
bail him, another writ could be had directing the
sheriff to apprehend the warden himself.

The legislation thus effected at the very com-
mencement of Edward III.’s reign broke the back
of the ancient forest laws. Though it did not
paralyse their force, it was the direct cause of
gradually weakening the hold of the crown on
the royal forests. In the third year of his reign
this king was also compelled to confirm Magna
Charta and the Charta de Foresta of 1225, to
guarantee that future perambulations should be
as in the time of Edward I., and that a charter

should be made and given to every shire peram-
D

50 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

bulated. Extortion and oppression by Foresters
again becoming rife, a further statute was issued
in 1352, ordaining that ‘No Forester nor keeper
of Forest or Chase, nor none other Minister, shall
make or gather Sustenance, nor no other Gather-
ing of Victuals, nor other thing, by Colour of
his Office, against any Man’s Will, within their
Bailiwick nor without, but that which is due of
ancient Right.’

Further concessions were demanded from
Richard II., but the next legislation only took
place during the last year of the reign of Edward
IV. (1483), authorising the cutting and sale of
woods, and their enclosure for a term of seven
years, ‘with sufficient Hedges able to keep out
all manner of Beasts and other Cattle out of the
same Ground for the Preservation of their young
Spring.’ In this statute, for the first time in the
history of England, it is recognised that a subject
may own a forest.' Hitherto a forest had been
a royal monopoly; and perhaps the insertion of

1 The statute begins thus: ‘If any of the King’s subjects,
having Woods of his own, growing on his own Ground, within
any Forest, Chase or Purlieu of the same within this realm of
England, shall cut, or cause to be cut, the same Wood or part
thereof, by Licence of the King or his Heirs, in his Forests,

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 51

the word ‘forest’ may have been a casual error
in place of a purposeful innovation.

Thenceforth, for many years nothing in the
way of forest legislation was enacted by Parlia-
ment. Henry VII. made it a felony to hunt deer
at night in the forests with painted visors, and
Henry VIII. made it also felonious to enter a
forest with intent to steal deer; but this last
rule was soon repealed by Edward VI. Neither
Mary nor Elizabeth gave any particular attention
to their forests. The last royal forest created in
England was Hampton Court, afforested by Act
of Parliament in the thirty-first year of Henry
VIII.’s reign. The two statutes enacted by Henry
in the year following that concerned themselves
with the ‘ Drift of Forests,’ or driving of horses
and other beasts of the field to ascertain that the
forests were not burdened to a surcharge by
those holding rights of common, and with en-
abling the Justices in Eyre to appoint a deputy
to make their circuit or Jér. Such circuits were
regularly made down to 1635, when they ceased.

Chases, or Purlieus, or without Licence, in the Forest, Chase, or
Purlieu of any other Person, or make any Sale of the same
Wood : It shall be lawful to the same Subject, &c.

52, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

After the Restoration, Charles II. tried to renew
them, in form at any rate, but the only [ver seems
to have been that made by Vere, Earl of Oxford,
in 1670.

The effect of Edward IV.’s statute of 1483
seems to have been to give a great impulse to
the wastage and destruction of woodlands, and
to the clearance of wooded tracts for agricultural
and pastural purposes. That this was so seems
clear from what Holinshed says in his Description
of England: ‘1 might here take occasion,’ he
says in the chapter Of Woods and Marishes, ‘to
speake of the great sales yeirlie made of wood,
whereby an infinit quantitie hath bin destroied
within these few yeers: but I give over to travell
in this behalfe. Howbeit thus much I dare
afirme, that if woods go so fast to decaie in the
next hundred yeere of Grace, as they have done
and are like to doo in this, sometimes for increase
of sheepwalks, and some maintenance of prodi-
galitie and pompe.. . it is to be feared that
the fennie bote, broome, turffe, gall, heath, firze,
brakes, whinnes, ling, dies, hassacks, flags, straw,
sedge, reed, rush, and also seacole will be good
merchandize even in the citie of London, where-

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 53

unto some of them even now have gotten readie
passage, and taken up their innes in the greatest
merchants parlours. . . . Certes every small occa-
sion in my time is enough to cut down a great
wood, and everie trifle sufficeth to laie infinite
acres of corne ground into pasture.’

How strange now seems this early reference
to ‘seacole,’ as then apparently only beginning to
supplant the use of wood as fuel! By Evelyn’s
time its use in London had become so general,
that in his treatise Fumifugium (1661) he wished
the London smoke nuisance to be rectified by
immediate Act of the Parliament then sitting.
As a matter of fact, coal became an article of
trade under Henry III., while in Scotland the
first charter giving the right to dig for coal dates
from 1291. But it did not become a common
article of fuel till a very much later and com-
paratively recent date.

A statute of Henry VIII.’s reign enjoined the
‘replantation of forest trees to cure the spoils
and devastations that have been made in the
woods,’ while in Scotland the planting of woods
was also encouraged about the same time, in
the reign of James V. (1513-1542). It had

54 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

previously been decreed by James II. that ‘ woods
sould be planted, hedges made, and brome sawing,
under sic paines, as law and unlaw of the Baron
or Lord sall modifie.” In 1504, during the reign
of James IV., it was enacted that, as ‘the wood
of Scotland was utterly destroyed,’ a penalty of
five pounds should be incurred for felling or
burning green wood in future without permis-
sion; and every lord and landholder was obliged
to plant at least one acre of wood, if there were
no great wood or forest upon his estate. The
larger landowners were also required to form
parks replenished with deer, and to make ponds,
rabbit-warrens, dovecots, orchards, and hedges.
These penalties proving insufficient, the fine was
raised; for James V. enacted that ‘planting of
woods, forrests, making of hedges, and hayning
(i.e. enclosure) is commanded to be done, under
the paine of ten pounds.’

This is very much to the effect of what Holin-
shed subsequently desired for England. ‘I would
wish,” he said, ‘that I might live no longer than
to see some things in this land reformed, that
is, . . . that everie man, in whatsoever part of
the champaine soile enjoieth fortie acres of land,

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 55

and upwards, after that rate, either by free deed,
copie hold, or fee farme, might plant one acre of
wood, or sowe the same with oke mast, hasell,
beech, and sufficient provision be made that it
may be cherished and kept. But I feare me that
I should then live too long, and so long that I
should either be wearie of the world, or the
world of me; and yet they are not such things
but they may easilie be brought to passe.’

Even earlier than this, however, trees and
woods had been cultivated prior to the reign of
Edward IV., while in 1523 John Fitzherbert
wrote his Book of Husbandry, the first work
in the English language which deals with the
cultivation of trees. In this he treats shortly
of the removal and planting of trees, the fell-
ing of timber and of wood for household use or
sale, the ‘shredding’ or pollarding of trees, and
coppicing in enclosures, or how ‘0 kepe springe
wode. Immediately after the chapter on trees
comes a quaintly-naive passage in which ‘short
informacyon for a yonge gentylman that entendeth
to thryve’ is thus given: ‘I advyse hym to get a
copy of this present booke and to rede it frome
the begynnynge to the endynge, wherby he may

56 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

perceyve the chapytres and contentes in the same,
and by reason of ofte redynge he may waxe perfyte
what sholde be done at all seasons. For I lerned
two verses at gramer scole, and those be these :—

“ Gutta cavat lapide non vi, sed sepe cadendo:
Sic homo sit sapiens non vi, sed sepe legendé.”’’

How many schoolboys since then have had
to learn the same old story, that the constant
dropping of water weareth away a stone, and
that a man may acquire much knowledge by
constant reading?

The course of affairs with regard to the great
woodlands of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales can-
not be traced with anything like the same pre-
cision as in England, nor are they probably
anything like so interesting. According to Skene
(Celtic Scotland, vol. iii. p. 283), ‘what had origi-
nally been the waste land of the tribe became
known as the forest, and became dissociated from
the cultivated land of the thanage. It either
formed the subject of a separate grant, or was
retained as a royal forest.’

These royal forests comprised large tracts of
land subject to the ‘ Forest Laws,’ which were
nothing like so severe as those that had been

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 57

enforced in.England. Large tracts in the south
covered with a natural growth of trees were
devastated during the period when Edward I.
waged war in Scotland ; and John of Gaunt, Duke
of Lancaster, is said to have employed twenty-
four thousand men in destroying the forests as
punishment for an incursion. Before the Stuarts
ascended the throne of England, Jacobean statutes
had been promulgated throughout Scotland en-
joining the formation of plantations of trees; and
early in his reign James I. of England gave
attention to the preservation of immature timber
trees, and issued more than once proclamations
enjoining the retention of ‘stores’ when the
underwoods were being felled. In a proclama-
tion, issued in 1608, he notified that ‘ great spoils
and devastations are committed within our forests,
parks, and chases.’ And the royal edict set forth,
‘we therefore have endeavoured to take course
to stop the said abuses . . . to the end that our
care may appear to the preservation and increase
of timber as well to others as to ourselves . . .
we do straightly command and charge all our
loving subjects in general that in their own woods
they presume not hereafter to defraud the true

58 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

meaning of our statutes by cutting and felling the
young stores when they usually fell their under-
woods.” And he set an excellent example by
laying down a rule for the New Forest, that in
the ordinary annual falls for fuel, &c., ‘all
timber trees are to be excepted, and all saplings
of Oak that are likely to make timber, and that
twelve standels be left in every acre.’

Much the same thing probably happened in
Ireland, though neither that country nor Scotland
has yet had its Manwood to trace and record
in detail the gradual evolution of the forest laws.
Harbouring the Irish, the woods were a source of
danger to the English nobles, and everything was
done to effect their destruction; while from the
very circumstances of English rule in Ireland
there could be no royal forests reserved for the
king’s amusement.

That the Scottish laws relating to forests
were nothing like so ancient as those of Eng-
land seems clear. ‘There is, probably, no
Scotch writing extant,’ says the Preface to
the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, pub-
lished by royal command in 1844, ‘whether of
Charter, Record, or Chronicle, so old as the reign

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 59

of Malcolm Canmore, who died in the year 1093.
And there is no good reason to believe that
writing was practised at a much earlier period in
the country. The scanty notices of partially-
informed foreigners, or the still more fallacious
native traditions, are therefore our only guides
to the civil history of the earlier period.’ And
with regard to ‘laws for which no authority
exists so old as the reign of Robert I.’ (1306-
1329), it remarks that ‘most of the later
manuscript compilations have a large collection
of laws under the title of Leges Forestarum. But
these are always of a most miscellaneous descrip-
tion, and contain only a few that are properly
forest laws and regulations. All of that descrip-
tion are here given. They are for the most part
chapters of well-known English statutes, and it
may be thought their chief value here, to show
how readily the Scotch lawyers, even of a later
age, adopted the provisions of the English
legislature, while nevertheless they preferred
pecuniary penalties and mitigated the savage
spirit of the forest law of England.’

Sir John Skene, in his Regiam Majestatem :
The Auld Lawes and Constitutions of Scotland,

60 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

faithfullie collected furth of the Register and other
Auld authentick bukes (1609), gives the full text
of ‘The Forest Laws, whereof the Author is
alleaged to be King William, in ane auld Buke
pertaining to Sr David Lindesay of Edzell,
Knicht, and ane of the Senatours of the College
of Justice.’ Subsequent investigations have shown
so early an authorship to be incorrect ; but Skene
was himself conscious of working under certain
disadvantages, when he said in his preface,
“Quhat I have done, I remit it to thy judge-
ment and censure: I have travelled meikill, ane
lang time; bot how profitable, I can not declare.
I am the first that ever travelled in this mater,
and therefore am subject to the reprehension of
many, quha sall follow after me; quhom I re-
quest maist friendlie to take in gude parte, all
my doings.’

The laws themselves are, even for a much
later date than King William (1165-1214),
characterised by extreme leniency. They are
comprised within twenty-two short sections.
The herding or straying of cattle was for-
bidden in ‘the close or hanite parts of the
wood’ (silva prohibita), ‘except they have

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 61

licence fra the Forester: be fiftene days before
the feast: of Saint John the Baptist, and be
fiftene days after the said feast, under the paine
and unlaw of aucht kye’; and a similar fine
was payable on the third occasion on which cattle
had been allowed to enter the king’s forest,
the mulct on each of the two previous times
being ‘foure pennies.’ If sheep were found
grazing in the forest, ‘quhither there be ane
keiper or nocht, the forester may tak ane scheip
to his awne use of the flock’; while ‘gif goat
be found in the forest thrise: it is lesome to
the forester for ilk time, to hang ane of them
be the hornes, upon ane tree. And for the
fourt time, to slay ane of them.’ Again,
‘anent swine, it is ane approuen use and con-
suetude, to defend and forbid publickly in
paroch kirkes, that they enter nocht within the
Forests. And gif they be found within the
Forest be the Forester after the said inhibition,
it is lesom to him, for ilk time of three times,
to tak ane to himself. And gif they be found
the fourt time, they sall be all taken, and im-
brocht to the King’s use.’ Pannage was, how-
ever, provided for in good mast years. ‘Gif

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64 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

and liable to be put under pledges if it were
‘found in anie forest ; and he be nocht bound
in bands,’ while ‘gif ane hairhound be found
rinnand, to the hurt of the forest; he sould
be taken, and presented to the forestar, or viri-
dier: quha sall send him to the King, or to
the cheif Justiciar of the Forest.’ Offences
against game were, as under English law, con-
sidered the most serious; yet even they were,
by comparison with the Southern laws, very
mildly dealt with. ‘Gif anie man takes ane
wilde beast in the forest, without ane warrant,’
he was to be arrested, and could not be set at
liberty * without speciall command of the King,
or of his Justiciars’ ; while ‘ gif anie hunts within
the King’s forest, without licence; he sall pay ten
ponds.’ Successful hunting was therefore a much
more heinous offence than the mere pleasure of
the chase. A free tenant who had ‘be vertew of
his infestment, free power to hunt within his awne
land, marchand neare to the Kings forest . . .
may follow his hounds within the Kings forest,
as farre as he may cast his horne or his dog-
leisch.’ Otherwise, ‘he sall pay aucht kye: and
sall tine his hounds, with the beast.’

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 65

These ancient Forest Laws of Scotland seem,
indeed, to have been conceived in the finest
and most generous spirit of true sport. Nothing
could well be more reasonable than the last
clause of the section relative to hunting within
the king’s forest. ‘And quhasoever sal] follow
his hounds or dogges runnand at ane beast, fra
his proper land within the King’s forest: he
sall remove, and lay aside his bow and his
arrowes, gif he anie hes; or he may bind the
bow and the arrowes with the bow-string. And
gif the hound slayes the beast: he with his
hound and the beast sall pas away quite and
free, but anie challange of the King, or Lord
of that forest.’

In one point the Scottish laws differed essenti-
ally from the English, because forests could be
owned by ‘anie Baron: being infeft by the
King, in free Forest: and with inhibition that
na man do anie trespass in the samine; under
the forefault, and pane of ten punds.’ The
laws applied equally to these as to the king’s
forests, and such ‘Lord of the Forest’ could
condone no crime or trespass. ‘Gif the Lord

of the Forest will not persew the said crime,
E

66 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

or trespass: or yit dissembles for particular
affection; that he knawes anie sic crime or
trespass. Nevertheles, the King hes gude richt,
and titill to aske ten punds; for breaking of
his command, and inhibition foresaid.’

The Jacobean laws as to hunting, hawking,
and so forth were all likewise drawn up in the
true spirit of genuine sportsmanship. ‘Na man
suld ride or gang in their neighbours cornes in
halking, or hunting, fra pasche untill the samin
be shorne. Na man suld ride nor gang upon
quheat na time of the yeare. Na Pertrik suld
be taken untill Michelmas. Na persons ranges
uther mens woods, parkis within dikes, or brumes,
without license of the awner of the ground, under
the paine of refounding the skaith to the partie,
and ten punds to the King, for the first fault:
twentie punds for the second fault: and confis-
cation of moveable gudes for the third fault.’
All offences against the game laws were ‘crimes
punished be pecuniall paines.’ A fine of ten
pounds was inflicted on any one who ‘should
slay Daes, Raes, nor Dear in time of storme, or
snaw, or slay any of their Kiddes, untill they be
ane yeare auld.’ Forty shillings was the pain for

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 67

taking eggs ‘out of Pertricks, or wylde Dukes
nestes’; and the same penalty extended to taking
partridges, plovers, black-cock, grey-hens, muir-
cocks, ‘nor sic fowles,’ from the beginning of
lent till August. Hares and Rabbits, or ‘cun-
nings’ as they were then called, were not to be
slain in time of snow under penalty of six shillings
and eightpence.

Rough but effective protection was also given
to the larger wild birds in those days. ‘Na
man sall sell or buy any read of fallow Deare,
Daes, Raes, Pertricks, Mure-fowles, Black-cocks,
Aith-hennes, Termiganes, wild Dukes, Teiles,
Ateils, Gordons, Mortons, Schildernes, Skail-
draikes, Herons, Buteris, any sic kinde of fowles,
commonly used to be chased with Hawks, under
the paine of ane hunder pounds to be incurred,
alswell be the buyer as the seller: and in case
any of them be inabill to pay the said summe,
they sall be scurged be the apprehender, throw
the burgh or towne, quhere they are apprehended.’
One poor, unfortunate bird, however, was out-
lawed and doomed to remorseless destruction.
‘Ruikes bigand in Kirkyards, Orchards, or tries,
sall be destroied, and their birds not suffered

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470 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

ously be planted up have been met by some with
the objection that it would be vain to clothe wild
tracts with forest where no trees are growing.
This idea rests on a total misconception of past
historical facts. Waste lands were originally
under wood, and waste meant the felling or
cutting down of any woods which grow scatter-
ing, or any thick covert in the forest, without
the license of the Forest Court. Chalmers, in
his Caledonia, 1807 (vol. i. page 791), tells how
‘every district of Caledonia, as the name implies,
was anciently covered with woods. The many
mosses of Scotland were once so many woods ;
as we may learn from the number of trees, which
are constantly dug from the forests, that have
lain for ages below the surface. During the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries not only the
kings, but the bishops, the barons, and abbots
had their forests in every district of North
Britain, in which they reared infinite herds of
cattle, horses, and swine. It will*scarcely be
credited that many bleak moors, which now dis-
figure the face of the country, were formerly
clothed with woods, that furnished useful timber
and excellent pasturage; yet is the fact clearly

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 71

proved by the positive evidence of record. Oak
appears, in those times, to have been the wood of
most general use. The bridges, the castles, the
churches, and the towns were chiefly built with
this useful timber. The waste of domestic use,
as well as the wars of Edward I., left many woods
of great magnitude, and usefulness, in every shire
of Scotland, at the accession of Robert Bruce.
Still more wasteful wars commenced with that
event, which may be said to have lasted, with
little intermission, during half a century. Add
to the devastation of these wars the destruction of
time and chance, of neglect and idleness, whence
we may clearly perceive adequate causes of the
deplorable waste of the Scottish woods. There
are in the maps of Scotland a thousand names of
places, which are derived from the woods, which
no longer exist on the face of the country.
And there are in the Chartularies numerous
notices of forests, in many places where not a
tree is now to be seen.’

What remains, for example, of Ettrick Forest
in Selkirkshire, consisting largely of pine mixed
with oak, birch, and hazel, where ‘beasts of
chase, and birds of prey, formerly abounded’?

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76 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

At the time of the Restoration the forests of
Britain still supplied all the timber and other
wood required by the country. But the supply
of oak for the king’s navy and for the growing
mercantile fleet had run so short, that those in
authority were much concerned about future
supplies. So much so was this the case, that
the necessity for doing something to encourage
the growth of timber, and especially of oak,
was pressed upon the king’s notice. The plan
resolved on was to get his then recently-founded
Royal Society to select some one of light and
leading to discourse upon the pleasures and
profits of growing timber. The man selected
for this purpose was John Evelyn, a younger
son of the Squire of Wotton, in Surrey, one
of those taking a chief part in the foundation
of the Royal Society, the Presidentship of which
he thrice subsequently refused. He had all the
requisite qualifications for the task proposed.
Filling various offices as a Commissioner of the
Crown, he was well known and liked in the best
society of the town, where he was also already
recognised as somewhat of an authority on mat-
ters of rural economy. Besides these essential

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 77

requisites, he had the additional qualification of
being a most devoted and loyal courtier, dis-
tinguished by his protestations of loyalty even
at a time when the general tone of the de-
monstration and expression of this was what
would now be considered sycophantic in the
extreme. Bringing a vast store of enthusiasm,
a graceful style, and what was in those times
termed a ‘pretty wit’ to the genial task, Evelyn
on 15th October 1662 read to the Royal Society
his Sylva; or, a Discourse of Forest Trees, and
the Propagation of Timber in His Mayestie’s Do-
minions. Ordered by the Society to be printed,
this charming work, the great classic of British
Forestry, went through no less than five editions
by 1729, nine editions by 1812, and two since.
In these days of depression in the value of
landed estate, of death duties, of rating of wood-
lands, of other burdens that have fallen heavily on
land, and lastly, of often excessive preservation
of ground game, Evelyn might have been speak-
ing but yesterday when, in his preface ‘to the
Reader,’ he says that his treatise ‘is only for
the Encouragement of an Industry, and worthy
Labour, too much in our days neglected, as haply

78 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

esteem’d a consideration of too sordid and vulgar
a nature for Nodle Persons and Gentlemen to busie
themselves withal, and who oftner find ways to
fell down and destroy their Trees and Plantations,
then either to repair or improve them.’

As a good Royalist he gives a hard knock to
the heroes of the Commonwealth, and at the
same time indicates certain of the causes of the
excessive clearance of woodlands, when he con-
tinues: ‘But what shall I then say of our late
prodigious Spoilers, whose furious devastation of
so many goodly Woods and Forests have left an
infamy on their Names and Memories not quickly
to be forgotten! I mean our unhappy Usurpers,
and injurious Seguestrators; not here to mention
the deplorable necessities of a Gallant and Loyal
Gentry, who for their Compositions were (many of
them) compell’d to add yet to this Waste, by an
inhumane and unparallel’d Zyranny over them, to
preserve the poor remainder of their Fortunes, and
to find them Bread,’

The particular difficulty about oak timber for
shipbuilding, however, became greater as time
went on and the requirements of the nation in-
creased. The tonnage of the navy, which had

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 79

been 17,110 tons in 1603 and 57,463 in 1660,
rose during Charles II.’s reign to 103,558 tons.
And it went on steadily increasing, and had risen
to 413,667 tons by the end of 1788, while the sup-
plies of oak were, on the contrary, rapidly falling.
From 197,405 loads of timber fit for the navy in
the New Forest in 1608, the supply sank to 19,873
in 1707. Under more conservative treatment
about Evelyn’s time it rose to 36,662 loads in
1764, but by 1783 it had fallen lower than ever,
to 19,827 loads, or not much more than one-tenth
of what it had been less than 180 years before.
(Percival Lewis, Historical Inquiries concerning
Forests and Forest Laws, 1811, pp. 121, 226).
But just as our humid insular climate has saved us
from absolute agricultural ruin, such as would have
been the certain consequence of excessive clearance
of woodlands if we had a climate like that of con-
tinental Europe, so too did our ocean communica-
tions and our acquisitions in the East Indies save us
from what might have been disastrous difficulties
about insufficient supplies of oak for our ship-
building yards. The pressure of the dockyards
was relieved by the shipment of teakwood from
Bombay ; and this was the commencement of the

AN ENGLISH Woop, MIXED FoRESTRY

To face page 81

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 81

crops, save in exceptional cases), close planting,
judicious thinning regulated mainly in accordance
with the demand for light made by each kind of
tree forming the ultimate crop to be harvested as
mature timber. And there has been neglect in
regard to various matters which go to make the
difference between Arboriculture, or growing of
trees, and Sylviculture, or Forestry concerning
itself with the growth of crops of timber.

As matters are, our woods and forests now only
ageregate about three million acres, and are so
inadequate for the supply of existing require-
ments in timber and other woodland produce, that
our imports under these heads amounted to the
enormous sum of over twenty-five and a third
million pounds sterling during 1899. Of this
over five million pounds were for rough-hewn,
and over sixteen million pounds for sawn or
dressed timber, practically all of it coniferous
timber from the Baltic, Scandinavia, and Canada,
which might quite well be grown in the British
Isles. Making a liberal deduction for the value
of labour included in these coniferous imports
aggregating over twenty-one million pounds, the

undeniable fact is laid bare that Britain annually
F

82 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

pays, and principally to foreign countries, no less
than between eighteen and nineteen million pounds
sterling for pines and fir timber which could
quite well be grown in Great Britain and Ireland.
There are some sixteen million acres, now prac-
tically unproductive, available for this purpose ;
and if our existing woods and forests were
managed on business principles, and State en-
couragement were given for making large planta-
tions under economical management, Britain might
in the future be self-supporting as to all the coni-
ferous wood required for building purposes.

In Britain, Forestry on business principles must
soon pay better than ever it has done since the
changes consequent on the great revolution in
communications and commerce effected by rail-
ways and steamships. The rapid commercial deve-
lopment and the ever-growing expansion of trade
in America and Germany, our greatest commercial
rivals, are bringing an influence to bear on the
great timber markets of the world which has
already begun to cause the price of timber to
rise. And this rise in the price of timber will
not be merely temporary, it will be permanent
and progressive,

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 83

Briefly stated, the economic conditions now
already obtaining, and practically certain soon to
become greatly accentuated, are such that the
present sources of supply throughout the world
are just able to meet the existing demand. But
the demand seems certain to increase, and such
enhancement can only be met by working out
timber from backwoods and remote tracks which
are at present unremunerative. Hence a general
rise in prices throughout Scandinavia, Russia, and
Canada must be the direct result of competition
between Britain, America, and Germany. Conse-
quently, also, prices for home-grown timber in
Britain must rise; and the highest market price
will, of course, be obtainable for clean, well-grown
timber best answering the requirements of the
market.

If our present three million acres of woodlands
were trebled in extent, and were all managed
on business principles, in place of being under
uneconomic management as game coverts and
pleasure grounds, as is now mostly the case with
British forests, this would merely be able to
supply existing requirements, and no more. Nay,
even if we had twelve millions acres under forest,

84. OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

and all under the best of management, they would
probably be just about able to supply the demand
for timber likely to exist at the time plantations
now formed may become mature. Past experi-
ence has shown that the demands for timber are
constantly increasing, despite the more extensive
use of substitutes like iron and stone for con-
structive purposes.

While the total imports of hewn timber have
only risen slightly during the last five to eight
years, those of sawn and dressed timber have
during the same time increased by fifty per cent.
in value; and this upward tendency is likely to
manifest itself yet much more rapidly in the near
future. It seems marvellous, indeed, that a matter
of such great national importance has hitherto
received so very little attention. If adequate
measures were taken to try and grow the eighteen
million pounds’ worth of pine and fir we now
import, and which imports may become greatly
increased in value within a comparatively short
period, a vast economic field, now left neglected
and uncultivated, could easily be made to yield
a golden harvest. Not only would this vast sum
be retained within our own country, in place

ANCIENT AND MODERN FORESTRY 85

of going chiefly to Russia and Scandinavia, but
much more money would also be circulated in
the formation, tending, and reaping of the crops
of timber, in its transport and conversion, and
in its distribution to the places of consumption.
With so much land of poor quality lying uncul-
tivated in many parts of the British Isles, the
apathy shown towards Forestry in Britain is one
of the things that it is impossible to understand.
Our humid climate has saved us from the agri-
cultural consequences of excessive clearance of
woodlands; but we are now probably very soon
about to reap commercially what we have sown
in the wholesale destruction of the crops of
timber with which the British Islands were once
quite as richly endowed by nature as were the
foreign countries that have better husbanded
their natural resources in woodlands.

Heroic measures to replace the woodlands
destroyed can only be undertaken on a sufficiently
large scale by receiving considerable encourage-
ment and assistance from the State, whose attitude
has hitherto been extremely unsympathetic in this
respect. But something, at any rate, can with-
out much difficulty be done to remedy existing

86 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

defects in the management of the Crown forests
and of private woodlands in Britain; and in
the following chapters an attempt will be made
to indicate various matters tending in this direc-
tion, without treating them in too technical a

manner.

~e

i
Karnben. ipso

CHAPTER III

l

Among the Oaks

NO other tree of the forest has so often as the
oak been sung by poets. Ever since the days of
Virgil and Horace, it has been the monarch of
the woodlands, the typical embodiment of majestic
grandeur, of stately strength, and of rugged
resistance alike to the storms of spring and
autumn and to the wintry blasts. Whether
as an ornamental tree in parks and pasture lands,
spreading out giant arms beneath which the
cattle and sheep can find a welcome refuge from
the burning sun in summer, or as a true tree of
the forest, growing as a standard in copse, or
as a timber tree of the highwoods, the oak is
7

88 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

one of the most beautiful and poetic objects in
sylvan scenery.

It would, indeed, be sacrilege to lay the axe
to the roots of the aged monarchs of many a
park and chase, the last survivors of stately trees
coeval with those which Tennyson describes so
graphically in The Foresters, when Robin Hood,
addressing Maid Marian, crowned with an oaken
chaplet as Queen of the Wood, invites her to

« Sit here by me, where the most beaten track
Runs through the forest, hundreds of huge oaks,
Gnar]’d—older than the thrones of Europe—look,
What breadth, height, strength—torrents of eddying bark!
Some hollow-hearted from exceeding age—
That never be thy lot or mine !—and some
Pillaring a leaf-sky on their monstrous boles,
Sound at the core as we.’

But in the woods themselves it is a different
matter. Here a beauty of utility can often quite
easily be allied closely with beauty of form, for
Forestry on business principles is not synonymous
with the spoiling of sylvan scenery. The shapely
stem and the well-formed crown of branches and
foliage of oak standards grown properly in copse-
woods, are no less lovely in their own way than
huge-limbed, rugged trees which are allowed to

AMONG THE OAKS 89

spread their arms abroad, and still to stand long
after their maturity, when their usefulness and
their greatest profit as timber trees are already
on the wane.

The oak has played a far more important part
in English history than any other tree. Oaks
were objects of worship among the aboriginal
Celts and Britons; they were the sacred trees
beneath whose boughs the ancient Druids per-
formed their mystic rites. Of such an oak
Spenser says in his Shepherd’s Calendar—

‘ For it had been an ancient tree,
Sacred with many a mystery.’

It was beneath the spreading branches of oaks
that the Folkmote was at one time held. They
were often historical landmarks, known for cen-
turies as fixing the boundaries of parishes and
shires. At the time of the Conquest they were
principally valued, like the beech, for the mast
they yielded as pannage for hogs and swine, and
as toothsome food for the king’s deer. Later on,
however, throughout the whole of the early period
of the naval development of Britain, the oak was
by far the most important among timber trees.

g0 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

Its uses, and its national importance formerly, may
be estimated from the following appreciation of
it in Holinshed’s Description of England (chapter
xxil.): ‘Howbeit as everie soile dooth not
beare all kinds of wood, so there is not anie
wood, parke, hedgerow, grove, or forrest, that is
not mixed with diverse, as oke, ash, hasell, haw-
thorne, birch, beech, hardbeame, hull, sorfe,
quicken aspe, poplers, wild cherie, and such like,
whereof oke hath alwaies the preheminence, as
most meet for building and the navie, where-
unto it is reserved. This tree bringeth foorth
also a profitable kind of mast, whereby such as
dwell neere unto the aforesaid places doo cherish
and bring up innumerable heards of swine. In
time of plentie of this mast, our red and fallow
deere will not let to participat thereof with our
hogs, more than our nete: yea our common
pultrie also if they may come unto them. But
as this abundance doth proove verie pernicious
unto the first, so these egs which these latter doo
bring foorth (beside blackenesse in color and
bitternesse of tast) have not seldome beene
found to breed diverse diseases to such persons
as have eaten of the same.’

AMONG THE OAKS gl

Between 1640 and 1813 the value of oak
timber increased tenfold. During the last thirty
years of that period it had been quadrupled.
Although no longer a necessity for shipbuilding,
its uses are now so manifold and so well known,
that it would be superfluous to. enumerate them.
In general durability it excels the timber of any
other tree grown in Britain; and anything like
well-grown sound timber can easily be disposed
of at two shillings to half-a-crown, and often
more, per cubic foot.

From the manner in which the oak has usually
been grown in Britain, however, there is often a
want, in fact one might say there is a chronic want,
of long clean stems undamaged by branch knots.
The whole of England had to be scoured to
obtain suitable oak trees for lock-gates in the
Manchester Ship Canal, and there is the greatest
difficulty in obtaining boles that are sufficiently
long and straight to form beams of large size.

This is, of course, the natural consequence of
adherence to the methods which were most suit-
able for the growth of oak when it was mainly
required for shipbuilding. Crooks for knees and
ribs were necessary, and they could be obtained of

g2 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

the best quality and in the shortest space of time
by growing the oak trees as hedgerow timber, or
in parks, or as standard trees in copsewoods,
where they were allowed to have almost perfect
freedom to ramify according to their natural
habit when not limited with regard to growing-
space.

The early perception that a certain limitation
in the space allowed for growth is essential for
securing a good long stem, thus foreshadowing
one of the leading principles in the modern
methods of Forestry, is clearly proved in the
following extract from Evelyn’s Sylva, which
at the same time indicates with equal distinct-
ness the generally approved and customary
system of growing oak so as to encourage the
formation of curved wood specially adapted for
naval purposes. ‘Some advise,’ he says, ‘that
in planting of Oaks, &c., four, or five be suffer’d
to stand very neer to one another, and then to
leave the most prosperous, when they find the
rest to disturb his growth; but I conceive it
were better to plant them at such distances, as
they may least incommode one another: for
Timber-irees, 1 would have none neerer then

AMONG THE OAKS 93

forty foot where they stand closest; especially of
the spreading kind.’

This freedom and liberty of expansion side-
wards in all directions has long remained one
of the guiding principles in British Arbori-
culture, the oaks being grown as individual
trees, and not regarded as merely important
units or valuable items in the crops of timber.
And it is only within the last few years that
general opinion in this country has begun to
veer round so far as to admit that better
monetary results are certainly obtainable from
woodlands if these be grown much more thickly
than hitherto, or ‘in normal density of canopy
for the given kind of tree,’ as was the phrase
of the scientific forester.

Even before Evelyn’s time the disadvantages
of allowing branches to develop to an excessive
extent had been loudly decried by William
Lawson in his New Orchard and Garden (1618);
but he advocated pruning, and not any closer
position of the oak trees, for the improvement
of the bole.

It is only by growing oak, and all other
trees, more closely together than has hitherto

94 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

been customary in Britain that the natural habit
of this fine timber tree towards branch forma-
tion, and more especially the somewhat more
spreading tendency of the English or pedunculate
oak, as compared with the Durmast or sessile
oak, can be controlled so as to direct its energy
in growth towards the formation of a long clean
bole, free from thick branches causing knots
that would ultimately form weak spots in beams
and scantlings of timber. And it is equally
certain that this long, strong class of stem is
what will now fetch the highest price in the
timber market, because it yields the strongest
and best wood required for technical purposes.
Even more than 300 years ago it was recog-
nised that branching growth unfitted the oak
for certain purposes; and Holinshed speaks of
‘most of the wainescot that is brought hither
out of Danske, for our wainescot is not made
in England.’

Following the change in the market require-
ments there must of course, in the case of all
woods grown mainly for. profit, be a correspond-
ing change in the method of growing wood to
supply these new demands. This is now being

AMONG THE OAKS 95

recognised in Britain, and changes will naturally
take place in the treatment of woodlands. In
many cases, however, the changes must occur
slowly if at all; for the praiseworthy conservative
feeling which regards the woods of large landed
estates as sacred ancestral heritages will natu-
rally only yield gradually, when it is seen that
the removal of old trees and their replacement
by younger stems of more vigorous growth is no
wanton desecration of the beauty of ‘the wood-
lands wild.’ Churlish, indeed, would be he who
could wantonly, whether for his own profit or
otherwise, remove the aged, storm-battered oaks
still flourishing here and there in the woods or at
the edges of the forest as historical records, reach-
ing perhaps in their own life back to the ancient
times when they still bore their original name of
4ik, now surviving only in the word ‘acorn,’
and in names of places like ‘ Acton,’ ‘ Akenham,’
and the like. But, happily, by natural regene-
ration of oak in copses and highwoods, and
sowing of acorns, the old crops of timber can
be renewed without the eye being offended by
the rigid regularity of lines in plantations.
Where long stems of oak were obtainable, in

96 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

former times, this was usually the result of
chance rather than of set purpose and design.
Often, in fact, they were produced through what
might have been considered as rather a neglect
of thinning. But the advantages of close grow-
ing was sometimes illustrated in a very practical
manner, as, for example, in the following instance
mentioned by Gilbert White in his Natural
History of Selborne, in which he describes how
‘On the Blackmoor estate there is a small
wood called Losels, of a few acres, that was
lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar
growth and great value; they were tall and
taper like firs, but standing near together had
very small heads, only a little brush without
any large limbs. About twenty years ago the
bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court, being
much decayed, some trees were wanted for the
repairs that were fifty feet long without bough,
and would measure twelve inches diameter at
the little end. Twenty such trees did a purveyor
find in this little wood, with this advantage,
that many of them answered the description at
sixty feet. These trees were sold for twenty
pounds apiece,’

AMONG THE OAKS 97

There is, however, a limit to this forcing of
the oak in restricting its natural tendency
towards branching habit of growth, with a view
to the development of a long, clean bole. With
the oak, as with all the other forest trees, the
manner in which this treatment may be practised
depends not only upon a variety of physical
conditions relating to the given soil and situa~
tion, but also upon certain specific natural re-
quirements regarding a sufficient space for the
growth of each individual tree; and these latter
characteristics show themselves in a very marked
degree, either in a strong demand for light or in
a certain capacity for bearing shade.

In dealing with any kind of tree grown as a
timber crop, control over the tendency to the
formation of large branches can only be exerted
so long as the vegetative energy can be trans-
formed from impulse towards lateral extension
into growth upwards. So long as a rather close
condition of crop results in good growth in height,
this is more advantageous than branch develop-
ment; but when the former has reached its maxi-
mum and shows signs of diminishing, it is then

time to thin lightly, so as to allow the remaining
G

98 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

trees to have a better crown of foliage and to
thicken in girth. Neglect to thin at the proper
moment would of course lead to a crowded and
unhealthy condition, which is just as much to be
avoided as too open a growth. It is thus that
oak forests are treated in some parts of conti-
nental Europe, where they are made to attain a
maximum height of from a hundred to a hundred
and thirty feet, often with a clean stem for about
two-thirds of their length. The height attain-
able depends, however, to a very great extent on
the depth and the general suitability of the soil.
On deep fresh loams and in cool, shady dingles
and dells the oak is less impatient of shade or of
lateral confinement than on light sandy soils or
warm exposures, where its natural demands for
light and air become very marked. The soils
that in general suit the oak best are deep heavy
clay soils or stiffish loams, though it also does well
on lighter loamy and sandy soils that are deep
and fresh. But the largest trees and the finest
quality of wood are produced on deep clay lands.
In its natural habit of growth the oak exhibits
as necessitous a demand for light and air during
the young pole stage of growth as any other of

AMONG THE OAKS 99

our hardwoods, not even excepting the ash. And
this natural characteristic must always be taken
into account in growing it for profit as a crop
of timber.

The oak is suitable for growing in every kind
of wood, It is the best of hedgerow trees, for it
neither robs the soil of food intended for the
crops, nor tends to hinder the plough by throwing
out long shallow roots like ash and elm, nor does
it injure the crops by overshadowing to so great
an extent as some trees. In coppice for tanning-
bark it used to be a good form of investment,
yielding a quick and profitable return in the days
before the English market was spoiled first by
cheaper foreign bark and then by still cheaper ex-
tracts and chemicals. Its resistance, both in branch
and root, to the violence of storms makes it, no
less than for its beauty, the tree most suitable for
parks and pasture-lands. Its value makes it one
of the most desirable of the standard trees in
copsewoods, where the comparatively light shade
it casts on the underwood does not interfere un-
duly with the growth of the latter. Finally, it
forms an excellent crop in highwoods, though in
this form it can best be grown along with the

100 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

beech, which can not only bear a greater amount
of shade, but also preserves the moisture and the
general quality of the soil by overshadowing it
better, and by enriching it with the mould formed
from its heavy fall of foliage.

Though still possessing in many parts good
value as coppice, it is rather as a timber tree of
the copses and of the highwoods that the oak has
now, and will in the future continue to have, its
greatest value. Hence it may perhaps be profit-
able to give a little closer attention to these par-
ticular methods of growing crops of oak for the
timber market. In the great majority of British
woodlands oak is chiefly to be found in the copses.
It is the principal tree among the overwood, and
has always been the predominant standard from
time immemorial. But the treatment there
accorded to it has ever been merely a haphazard
sort of rule-of-thumb measure. Even James I.’s
command that in the New Forest ‘twelve stan-
dels be left in every acre,’ and that ‘all saplings
of oak that are likely to make timber’ should be
excepted when carrying out the fellings, though
a great move in an economic direction, did not

go far enough to ensure more or less regular

AMONG THE OAKS IOI

supplies of timber of different sizes at each return
of the fall to any given copse. This was easily
explainable. As Percival Lewis remarks of the
New Forest about ninety years ago, ‘The rabbit,
in his pursuit of food did much injury, and the
cutting of browse wood’ (for feeding the royal
deer), ‘as it was carried on in former times, must
have been attended with considerable depreda-
tions; the holly and the thorn are often the
preservers of the seedling oak.’ The same applies
to-day to a great many good oak-producing dis-
tricts. In the self-sown woods of Sussex, some
friendly furze bush has often been the guardian
angel of many a seedling now grown into a stout
and sturdy sapling or pole. The consequence is
that in most of our copsewoods the standard trees
are not more or less regularly distributed over
the area, and there is no regular gradation in
the ages of the standard trees forming the over-
wood. Again, many of the oak trees, with large
spreading branches, have been allowed to remain
long after completing their main growth and
thus attaining their marketable maturity. Yet

~~ the beautiful old oak trees that have endured

from generation to generation in woods owned

102 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

by the ancestors of the present landholders have
a truly pious and zsthetic value of their own, for
the loss of which mere money can never com-
pensate. The work of destruction is ever more
rapid than that of construction; and a couple
of woodmen with axe and saw could, in a few
hours at most, bring down with a crash to the
ground the stateliest monarchs in the forest.

The presence of vast numbers of large-crowned
oak trees in the copses is, however, a concrete
factor that must be taken into account wherever
the owner may desire to apply business principles
to the management of his woods. The oldest or
the most interesting trees can easily be preserved,
more especially if growing at the edge of the
woods or at the margin or crossing-points of
rides and green lanes. The others should be
gradually removed during the next two or three
falls of coppice, and should be replaced by stor-
ing fresh standards grown more in accordance
with the requirements of the timber market of
to-day.

The oak coppices freely, and can send out
good healthy stool-shoots up to the age of
sixty, or even, under exceptionally favourable

AMONG THE OAKS 103

circumstances, ninety years of age. When the
bark was still easily saleable and highly remune-
rative, oak was, of course, encouraged as one of
the chief kinds of wood among the coppice.
Owing to the fall in the price of oak-bark, how-
ever, this must naturally be less the case in
future than formerly. Thus, while efforts should
be made to stock the coppice as thickly as pos-~
sible with oak, ash, sycamore, maple, beech, and
hazel, according to the nature of the soil, the
main value of the oak will probably in future be
as a standard for the production of timber. The
only other trees which are likely to compete with it
in this respect are ash and larch. Often equally well
paid, and even sometimes much more remunerative
than the oak, these are, like it, trees making very
strong demands on light and air, casting but a
comparatively light shadow over the underwood
growing around them, and thriving best when the
soil is well protected by a thick undergrowth of
densely-foliaged coppice. As the treatment for
woods of this sort can be more appropriately
described with reference to all the light-demand-
ing trees, detailed consideration of the modern
continental method of working copsewoods may

104 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

advantageously be left to form a subsequent
chapter by itself.

The growth of oak in highwoods may either be
pure or else in mixed crops along with other kinds -
of trees. Pure woods of oak can only be grown
to the best advantage on soils that are fertile,
deep, and fresh. Where there is a tendency to
moistness in the soil, it is better to grow it along
with ash, elm, maple, and sycamore, or even with
alder, on land inclined to be marshy. On drier
land, especially where the soil is at all limy, oak
can best be grown along with beech, which pro-
tects and improves the soil, and keeps it as cool
and fresh as circumstances permit.

Whether planted pure, or only in groups on
the better parts forming patches throughout a
matrix of beech or other kinds of hardwood trees,
the treatment of the oak is based on the ruling
principle that, as it is to form the ultimate crop
of timber to be harvested, it shall throughout all
the operations of tending and thinning receive
the chief consideration. Other species interfering
with its growth are to be removed in favour of it
whenever necessary, and individuals of its own
species must also be removed whenever they

AMONG THE OAKS 105

interfere with the continuous good development
of those stems which, subject to gradual elimina-
tion of the weaker or rather inferior specimens,
will, in due course of time, form the mature
harvest of timber to be reaped.

Oak timber grown in this manner may gene-
rally be expected to attain maturity at about one
hundred and fifty to two hundred years of age,
although reliable data are not yet available to
indicate anything like definitely what rotation of
oak in highwoods will prove most remunerative.
Such data are still exceedingly difficult to obtain
in Britain; and, at best, they depend so much on
local circumstances—as to market demand, com-
munications and transport, soil and situation, and
the like—that it would perhaps be somewhat rash
to formulate any sort of general dictum about
such a matter as the most profitable age to fell
timber in highwoods.

All throughout the first half of this period,
when the young woods are passing through the
thicket and the pole stages of growth, till the
young trees have been drawn up to near the
total height they can attain on the given soil
and situation, the cleanings and weedings and

106 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

thinnings of the young woods should be carried
out with special reference to the oak. No definite
rule can be framed as to the time when this
operation becomes necessary. On some soils
the poles complete their main growth in height
as early as the fortieth to the sixtieth year, while
in other cases this condition is not attained till
perhaps the seventieth or eightieth year. Except
where actually filling spaces that would other-
wise be blank and unprofitable, softwoods like
birch, aspen, and willow should be cut out in
favour of hardwoods of any kind, while the latter
should be removed wherever they interfere with,
and threaten to impede or altogether suppress,
the growth of the oak. Only thus can the
oak, the ultimate crop desired, maintain itself
in advance of the other competitors for light
and air, many of which often show themselves of
somewhat speedier growth, and therefore likely
to outstrip it in the struggle upwards for supre-
macy. This war of genera—the ‘struggle for
existence” observable everywhere as one of the
great laws of nature—is nowhere more clearly
noticeable than among the trees of the forests
and woodlands.

AMONG THE OAKS 107

With the completion of its main growth in
height, the time arrives when the oak requires
a larger individual growing-space than it should
hitherto have been permitted to enjoy. Confined
within limits only prescribed by the danger of
overcrowding, the oaks have been forced upwards
so as to develop the greatest length of bole,
and the straightest, cleanest stem which can be
obtained under the given local circumstances ;
and the future object of the forester must then
of course be to make the young trees thicken
in girth as rapidly as possible, so as to get their
maximum of profit as a crop of timber in the
shortest space of time. The ‘financial maturity’
or most profitable time of harvesting crops of
timber, whether highwood, copse, or underwood,
is, in fact, with regard to woodlands, very much
what ‘the psychological moment’ is in human
affairs.

To those who are only acquainted with our
British woodlands, the best-managed woods on
the continent of Europe would at once appear
unhealthily crowded, and consequently badly
managed. But the fact admits of no argument,
that woods of all descriptions must be far more

108 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

closely and thickly stocked with highwood trees,
standards in copse, and coppice than now obtains
as the practice, if our woodlands are to be worked
so as to yield the largest returns on the capital
represented by the land and the crops of timber
it is bearing. :

There is only one way of enabling the young
trees to thicken rapidly in girth when once their
main growth in height has been completed; and
that is to allow them, from that time onwards,
a larger space for the growth of each individual
tree. But this should only be effected gradually,
and it must never be carried to excess. If cut
free suddenly, so that each tree has almost an
isolated position, the effect of the freer enjoyment
of light and air is often to cause a strong growth
of young shoots below the crown of the tree,
which then becomes ‘stag -headed,’ and dete-
riorates in value as timber. Even when the
damage does not actually proceed thus far, the
giving of more light and air than is necessary
under the circumstances tends always to make
the crown of foliage and the branch development
work down the stem, so as to interfere with
the ultimate value of the bole as clean timber.

AMONG THE OAKS 109

The young trees should therefore be gradually
accustomed to a larger growing-space, so that the
crown of foliage of the tree may increase and
form a greater quantity of wood year by year.

Thenceforth, thinnings or partial clearances of
the crop are necessary about every ten to fifteen
or twenty years when the expanding crowns of
the trees are found to interfere with each other.
And when such operations are being carried out,
the trees removed are of course those which show
signs of disease, trees of other kinds, like ash or
sycamore, which reach their full physical maturity
at an earlier age than oak, and such oak as would
prove least profitable if allowed to remain longer
on the ground for the purpose of thickening into
larger and more valuable stems.

Up to this period in the cultivation of crops
of oak timber, judicious thinning forms the best
method of tending oak highwoods. With the
exception of larch, no timber tree is so much as
the oak dependent on thinning for its healthy
growth and continuous development. The great
golden rule for thinning, ‘Begin at an early
period, carry it out moderately, and repeat the
operation frequently,’ is one whose judicious appli-

110 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

cation is essentially necessary in growing crops
of oaks. Asa tree making strong demands for
light, however, what would be a moderate thinning
for beech would prove insufficient for oak ; hence,
in conducting thinning operations in oakwoods,
the requirements as to growing-space for the
next four or five years should be anticipated and
provided for.

In thus dealing with crops or groups of oak,
the somewhat anticipatory thinnings should re-
move all stems that are not necessary for the
maintenance of the /eaf-canopy or crown of
foliage of the wood; because crowding of the
individual poles, indefiniteness with regard to
what will form the predominating stems through-
out the crop, and a long struggle for supremacy
over surrounding competitors for the available
supplies of light, are even less desirable in oak-~
woods than in other hardwood crops. When the
trees are older, even the formation of a small
blank here and there is preferable to inter-
ference with the crown of foliage of the best
trees, as such blanks often soon close up again.
But when thinning is neglected, or is delayed too
long, or is carried out insufficiently, the further

AMONG THE OAKS 111

development of the oak is apt to be unsatisfactory
and disappointing.

This is, however a very different matter from
the far heavier thinnings made in olden times for
the express purpose of growing trees of branching
habit to yield crooks for the naval dockyards and
for shipbuilding in general. Though the market
demand for timber has long since changed, yet the
old method of thinning, now excessively heavy
for the production of what must prove the most
remunerative description of oak, is still adhered
to. This system seems easily capable of improve-
ment, and it stands in need of immediate change.

Simultaneously with heavier thinnings, when
the main growth in height has been attained, or
with partial clearances to stimulate the rapidity of
growth in girth, attention will have to be paid to
protecting the soil against the deteriorating in-
fluences of wind and sun. The strong demand
made by the oak for light, as evidenced by the
comparative thinness of its crown of foliage, is of
course accompanied by inability to shade the soil
from the exhausting effects of sunshine and
dry winds; while the now open condition of
the canopy of foliage overhead, caused by the

112 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

requirements of this tree for a large growing-space
during the second half of its life-period, renders
artificial assistance of some sort necessary. This
can best and most effectually be given by
means of providing an underwood for the pro-
tection and improvement of the soil. Where the
oak is grown scattered among a matrix of beech,
special measures of this sort are usually unneces-
sary ; but otherwise they must be undertaken, else
loss of capital will occur through deterioration
of the soil, which will affect both the future rate
of growth of the present still immature crop of
trees, and the whole well-being of the next crop
of timber that may be grown.

The best kind of underwood is beech, so far as
the protection and improvement of the soil is
concerned; but in most parts of Britain local
conditions will usually indicate ash, sycamore,
maple, hazel, and perhaps elm here and there, as
more likely to be profitable; for in our humid
climate these, and particularly the sycamore, will
often bear so considerable an amount of shade
as to make it very suitable for such an under-
wood. Many of these will no doubt spring from
the stool when their stems are removed during

AMONG THE OAKS 113

the earlier thinnings, but if not, then much can
be done for the formation of underwood at a
cheap rate by sowing and dibbling seed on well-
hoed patches, and by layering stool-shoots or
seedlings found growing on the area.

When once underwood has been formed, the
future treatment of the crop as it now exists
must of course depend mainly on local conditions
connected with the market for timber. In fact, it
is almost superfluous to remark that all the argu-
ments which can be adduced in favour of better
treatment of our woodlands are absolutely worth-
less unless such change will be remunerative. If
woods are to be treated on business principles,
then the treatment must really depend most of
all on the market for timber or other wood.
It is only when once a remunerative market is
ensured that advantage is to be found in improved
methods of Forestry. Such underwood as above
can either be worked as coppice, or it can be
allowed to grow up into larger poles to be
harvested when it is desired to reap the crop
of oak timber.

Oak woods treated thus may usually be ex-

pected to attain their most profitable age, 7.¢,
H

114 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

their financial maturity, at about a hundred and
forty to a hundred and sixty years, when the
stems should be quite as large as would be those
of two hundred years of age if grown in regular
highwoods as a pure crop of oak.

The regeneration of such woods and groups as
above described can easily be accomplished if the
soil has been properly protected. If the oak has
been grown along with beech, however, it may
often be best to regenerate the latter naturally in
the manner to be described in the next chapter,
while the oaks for that new crop can be intro-
duced wherever desired by means: of planting
stout healthy transplants. Otherwise the specific
method of regeneration must of course depend on
the nature of the underwood. If that be thick
and likely to spring vigorously from the stool
when cleared from the ground, nothing will re-
main but to put out stout oak plants strong
enough to hold their own, with assistance in the
way of weeding and thinning, against the coppice.
But if the woods have been thick enough to be
nearly pure oak at last, beneath the canopy of
which the underwood is not of very vigorous
growth, this can be cleared away and utilised

AMONG THE OAKS 115

while measures are taken for natural regeneration
of the oak from seed. This is not usually diffi-
cult, because where crops of oak can be grown
with more profit than pine, fir, and larch, the soil
must be anything but poor in quality.

Many of the self-sown oak and beech woods
are now found difficult to regenerate naturally.
Owing to the want of close cover the soil often
gets overgrown with grass or, worse still, with
moss; and then a satisfactory crop of self-sown
seedlings cannot reasonably be expected. Soil-pre-
paration of some sort is in such cases absolutely
essential to enable acorns and mast to germinate
and establish themselves in the soil. Moreover,
the change in the conditions between the olden
and the present times must also be taken into
account. Most of the woods now mature date
back to a period when cattle and swine were
probably still largely driven into the oak and
beech woods for grazing and pannage; and they
were in the vast majority of cases, no doubt,
the principal agents in obtaining a satisfactory
regeneration. The sharp hoofs of the cattle,
and the burrowing and wallowing of the swine
after satisfying themselves with mast, worked the

116 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

acorns and beech-nuts into the ground, besides
breaking this up so as to loosen it, aerate it,
and prepare it generally as an effective seed-bed.
Indeed, in many of the Continental woods, and
especially in beechwoods, the herding of cattle
and the pannage of swine form some of the usual
steps taken at the time of a seed-felling for the
regeneration of the mature crop of trees. It is
cheap, and to a certain extent effective; and it
forms a good basis for the assistance of natural
regeneration by more elaborate artificial mea-
sures in the way of hoeing or digging, sowing,
and planting.

A certain amount of soil-preparation to form
a seed-bed for the acorns will almost always be
necessary. Unless thus enabled to come into actual
contact with the soil, perhaps not one-hundredth
part of the acorns ever have the very slightest
chance of germinating on the dead foliage or
weeds which cover the surface of the ground.
The necessary soil-preparation can conveniently
be made in strips or patches, and of course
additional advantage is gained if the acorns are
dibbled into these. Otherwise, dibbling of acorns
may take place over the whole area without

AMONG THE OAKS 117

special preparation of seed-beds; but the early
development is always best, with the oak as
with all other kinds of trees, when the soil
has been loosened, and thus aerated and rendered
more easily penetrable by the tiny rootlets of
young plants.

As soon as the seedling crop appears the
seed-bearers have soon to be removed, because
the young oak is impatient of even the com-
paratively light and broken shade cast on it
by the parent trees. This is especially the case
on rather poor and dry soils, where the young
seedlings cannot thrive if deprived of the dewfall
at night. On a good, fresh soil, however, there
is less risk of damage being done by the over-
shadowing of the mature crop, so that its re-
moval can in this case be extended over a
somewhat longer time than would otherwise be
advisable.

As the parent trees are removed, the blanks
thus formed may be filled either by sowing
acorns or by planting ; while other blank spaces,
perhaps caused by their being poorer patches of
soil, or arising from any other physical reason,
can also be sown or planted with beech, ash, syca-

118 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

more, or whatever seems most likely to prove
profitable. An excellent opportunity is also
then offered for planting larch here and there,
as, in admixture with such a crop, it develops
into fine stems, and is much less liable to canker
than when grown in a pure crop by itself.
Without taking up much space or interfer-
ing perceptibly with the other trees, except
the oak itself, larch stems grown thus among
highwoods of broad-leaved trees yield timber
of the best quality, and commanding the highest
price.

As in other matters of Forestry, the particular
manner of growing oak and the various kinds of
trees that can most profitably be raised along with
it, except in the comparatively few cases where
it may be advisable to grow oak as a pure crop,
will of course mainly depend on the local con-
dition of the timber market. But in whatever
manner it be grown, it is essential to protect
the soil against deterioration and consequent
decrease in capital value as a producer of wood.
On the better and the moister classes of soil,
ash, sycamore, and maple will in this respect

deserve special attention as companions of the

AMONG THE OAKS 119

oak, while on drier land, particularly when of
a limy nature, the beech is its most useful
associate.

Accurate data as to the rate of growth of
oak in British woods are not yet available on a
sufficiently large scale to enable tables of average
height, girth, and cubic contents to be framed
for any or each class of soil. About sixty years
ago the estimate was that an oak growing on
a good soil and in a favourable situation should
contain about a ton of timber at seventy-five
years of age. In the oak woods of Hanover
the average yield on the better classes of soil
varies from about fifty to seventy-five cubic feet
per acre per annum for mature crops of pure
oak harvested at 160 years of age; but this
is of actual solid cubic contents, which must be
reduced by more than one-fifth before it can
be brought to the level of the ‘square of the
quarter-girth’ method employed in estimating
the cubic contents of standing trees or timber
in the log in Britain. How careful one must
be, however, in accepting statistics of this sort
is shown by the fact that the total contents
above the soil of highwoods of pure oak can

120 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

vary from about two to ten thousand cubic feet
(true contents, not reduced by square-of-quarter-
girth calculation) per acre, according as the wood
may be a thin crop on inferior soil, felled at
120 years of age, or a full crop on very good
soil, harvested at 160 years of age.

In felling mature oak trees in Britain it is
usual to bark them first of all; and this can
only be done during the spring, when the sap
is in most active flow. While the price of oak-
bark stood high—and formerly it commanded a
good sale—the harvesting of this was an im-
portant operation in British woods, and even
in the hedgerows where oak grew. This was
another very good reason, in addition to
the desire for curved timber for shipbuilding,
for giving each tree a free space for growth
and lateral expansion, as in hedgerows and
copsewoods, because the number of branches
increased the total quantity of bark, besides
making it thick and rich in tanning properties.
But the market has now fallen so much that
it is often questionable if the advantage obtain-
able from the sale of the bark really compensates
for obvious drawbacks attendant on the felling

AMONG THE OAKS 121

of big trees in spring, after most of the coppice
in the copses has come into leaf. In the
Selborne district of Hampshire the price of the
bark of large oaks has fallen, from a very high
figure formerly, to 67s. 6d. a ton in 1895, and
down even to 40s. in 1899; and throughout
the whole of Britain prices have greatly declined.
With such low rates it may sometimes be ques-
tionable if the margin of profit over the cost
of stripping makes spring felling and barking
remunerative, for the underwood will always be
damaged most in spring.

Perhaps in this particular matter, too, we may
receive useful hints in considering what is done
in other countries. In the oakwoods near Hildes-
heim, in Hanover, the big oak trees, when they
have reached their full maturity and are marked
for felling, are barked in late spring, when the
flow of sap is most active. But as winter felling
is preferable to the fall in spring, both on account
of the greater durability of the timber and of the
damage that must be done to the young crop on
the ground, the barked stems are allowed to stand
till the following winter. There is, it is true,
the drawback of the loss of a season’s growth,

122 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

but this is outweighed by the seasoning of the
timber and the growth of the young crop; for
the overshadowing by the dead stems is prac-
tically next to imperceptible.

This system seems worthy of a trial in Britain,
because it has the additional advantage of not
rendering sale of the timber necessary immedi-
ately after barking. The barked trees could
remain standing till a suitable purchaser bought
them, or till it was most convenient to fell and
log them for sale; and the longer they stood the
better would they season, and the more should
their wood rise in value.

Seasoning thus on the stool in the open air
would also be much more thorough and more
rapidly effected if the method of ringing or
‘girdling,’ which obtains in Burma with re-
gard to teak trees, to season them and render
them floatable, were at the same time adopted.
This consists in cutting into the stem all round
the trunk at the felling height, so that a ring of
sapwood is entirely removed and the cut enters
clean into the heartwood. The cleaner and deeper
this wedge-shaped incision is made into the heart-
wood, the more rapid and the more thorough is

AMONG THE OAKS 123

the seasoning. Shortly after girdling, the sap
throughout the whole of the tree above the
‘girdle’ becomes exhausted by the action of
the foliage. As the upward flow of sap from
the roots is thus quite cut off, the leaves very
soon wither and die. Gradually the bark loosens
its hold on the trunk and main branches, the
twigs and smaller branchlets decay and fall off,
while the dead stem remains gaunt and bare like
a blasted tree, becoming seasoned and dried by
sunshine and wind till it be felled and removed.
This would be no method for trees like pine or
spruce or ash, whose dead stems would soon
furnish breeding-places for swarms of noxious
bark beetles; but it might prove advantageous
for the treatment of oak. At any rate it seems
worth a trial. The danger of damage from
insects would certainly be removed altogether if
‘girdling’ and stripping of the bark of mature
trees were undertaken simultaneously in spring.
This is, of course, no new suggestion. In The
Woodlands, 1825, Cobbett says that ‘with regard
to the felling of Oaks, the Oak which is cut in
winter is much more valuable than that which is
Cut in summer; but as Oak wood is Oak wood,

124 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

and as Oak wood and Oak-bark will sell for more
than the same quantity of Oak wood alone, we
scarcely hear of such a thing as a winter-cut Oak.
In order to have both; in order to have the skin
as well as the body, and to have the body sound
too, some persons have barked their Oaks stand-
ing, and cut down the trees the succeeding winter.
This was practised, sometimes, hundreds of years
back; but, if it had been of any solid utility; if
it really had, in the end, been attended with
profit, the practice would have become general ;
instead of which, I never saw an instance of it in
all my life. Ihave seen small Oak stuff, in the
hedge-rows in Cornwall and Devonshire, thus
skinned alive, and there may be here and there
a man that applies the practice to large trees.
But, at any rate, the practice is very rare, and
very rare it could not be, if it were unequivocally
profitable. The method is only likely to be
tried experimentally in woods managed on busi-
ness principles; and a few experiments would
soon show far better than any mere theoretical
opinions, pro or contra, whether or not solid
advantages are to be gained by adopting such
processes. That the seasoning of standing trees

AMONG THE OAKS 125

can very easily be still further hastened, by simple
and ingenious means, malpractices in the teak
forests of Burma have long shown.

Within certain limits, something can be done
by pruning to improve the stems of oaks that
have been allowed to run prematurely in branches.
But the operation requires care, and is often
attended with danger, as will be more particularly
referred to in chapter ix.

The decline in the price of tanning-bark has of
course also affected very prejudicially the remune-
rativeness of oak coppices grown specially for the
production of this material. In the early Jacobean
statute already referred to, the cutting of coppice
for oak-bark was directed to take place from
April till the last day of June, so that the young
shoots springing from the stools should have
time to become strong and stout before the early
frosts came in autumn.

The treatment of oak coppice, in places where
it can still be grown with profit, is extremely
simple. In Belgium and Holland, along the
Rhine, and in the adjoining districts, coppice
woods of oak are still grown extensively, and
yield good returns; but in Britain the growth of

126 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

timber is in general more likely to be profitable.
In oak coppice the crop should be as full as
possible, and it should be kept free from admix-
ture of other growth, whether hardwoods or soft-
woods, except in those places that show themselves
unsuitable for the oak. The rotation in which
the coppice can be worked, and consequently the
number of compartments and the area to be cut
over, vary greatly according to the soil, the situa-
tion, and the local climate. The best rotation is
that which will enable each fall to be made just
at the age when the smooth bark, the ‘ pipe-bark’
of the oak-stubbs, begins to become rough and
fissured, because, after that, it contains less tannin
than before. In favourable situations, with good
soil and a warm southern exposure, the usual
rotation is about fifteen or sixteen years, though
varying of course from about twelve to eighteen
years according to special circumstances; but a
longer rotation is necessary for less productive
soils and a cooler climate.

For coppice woods the Durmast or sessile oak
yields on the whole better returns in bark, and
straighter and more vigorous shoots than the
English or pedunculate oak.

AMONG THE OAKS 127

In forming fresh coppices, or for filling up
blank spaces, planting or layering shoots from
the nearest stools is much preferable to sowing
acorns, as, though somewhat more expensive, it
attains the desired object in a much shorter space
of time. Except where the soil is shallow, copse-
woods will be more likely than pure coppice to
meet the general requirements of the market in
the near future. Wherever coppices are desired
to be transformed into copses, this can easily be
done by storing standards, though it takes a long
time to effect the change completely.

It may be observed with regard to oak, and
the observation also holds good for all other
kinds of crops of wood, that in the management
of highwoods the rotation of the fall will be
longest on the better classes of soil, while in
copse and coppice the most favourable soils and
situations permit the shortest rotation, and conse-
quently give the largest area for the annual fall.
This will be easily understood by the tables of
average annual growth included within chap-
ters ix and xi. That is to say, when the
crops are grown as highwoods for timber, the
capital represented by the soil and the growing

128 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

stock of wood will continue to increase in remu-
nerativeness for a longer term of years on good
soil and in a favourable situation than on in-
ferior soil and in an unfavourable situation. Or
to put it in another way, the better the soil and
the more favourable the situation, the longer will
it pay, as an investment, to allow the timber to go
on growing. Hence the business of Forestry is
to ascertain and determine the time at which the
maximum of profit is obtainable on the capital re-
presented by soil and timber; because the moment
the annual increase in growth begins to show any
fall in monetary value, as expressed per cent. on
the capital, that is then the proper time to harvest
the mature crop and raise up a new generation of
trees to be likewise dealt with economically as an
investment intended to produce the best income
obtainable from the land.

In the case of copses and coppice woods, how-
ever, the more favourable the soil and the situa-
tion generally, the shorter may be the rotation
without risking deterioration of the soil as a
producer of wood and bark. The conservation
of the productiveness of the soil must always
form one of the very first considerations in fixing

AMONG THE OAKS 129

the rotation of copse and coppice; for the tem-
porary advantages of short rotation with frequent
exposure of the soil to sun and wind would be
in the end dearly bought by gradual deterioration
of the land, as this would really mean diminution
of its capital value; and that would be false
economy, as well as bad Forestry.

It seems hard, when writing of the oak, so
intimately connected with the greatness of Britain,
to feel compelled to refrain from giving a few
details about some of the many historical and
interesting oak trees to be found in different parts
of the British Isles. But as this is a book on
Forests and Woodlands, and not on Trees, space
unfortunately forbids our wandering along these
seductive by-paths and discoursing on the more
purely esthetic side of British Arboriculture.

CHAPTER IV

In the Beechwoods

APPARENTLY it is not every lover of nature
who can appreciate to the full the charm of
the beechwoods. In single specimens the beech
(Fagus sylvatica) does not appeal to the poet in
anything like the same degree as the oak. It
has none of the sublime qualities of majesty
and of endurance for many centuries against
the destroying tooth of time. And yet, to the
forester, few sylvan scenes can equal in quiet
loveliness the dense beechwoods, thickly carpeted
with fallen leaves, in which stately, smooth-barked,
ashen-grey stems rise upwards in support of a

130

od

IN THE BEECHWOODS 131

heavy crown of foliage of exquisite beauty alike
in the tender green of spring, in the full vigour
of summer growth, or in the rich russet-brown
garb of autumn.

Gilpin, writing in 1791, had a poor, mean
opinion of this tree both from an esthetic and
an utilitarian point of view. He does not even
rank it among timber trees, ‘as its wood is of a
soft, spongy nature; sappy, and alluring to the
worm,’ adding also, ‘in point of picturesque
beauty I am not inclined to rank the beech much
higher than in point of utility.” Cobbett, too,
treats it rather slightingly, for he has just as
little to say about it in The Woodlands as about
the cherry, and less than about birch or alder.
Despite the majesty of the oak, there must yet
be many among us who will concur in thinking
Gilbert White’s estimate a much truer one, when
he speaks of ‘ deech, the most lovely of all forest
trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or
bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous
boughs.’

Among the older writers, favourable mention
is often made of it. ‘Yet have I known,’ says
Holinshed, ‘great woods of beech and hasell in

132, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

manie places, especialle in Barkeshire, Oxford-
shire, and Buckinghamshire, where they are
greatlie cherished, and converted to sundrie uses
by such as dwell about them.’

Since the time of Gilpin and Cobbett the
economic importance of the beech has increased
very considerably, and the prices commanded by
it at present, running up to Is. 6d. per cubic
foot, in Buckinghamshire and all around that
district, for chair-making and various other pur-
poses, make it deserving of attention and of
improved methods of treatment in all woods
grown for profit on the chalky or limy soils
abounding from there westwards, following the
Hampshire Downs and the Chiltern and Cotswold
Hills, into Gloucestershire. This particular local
industry goes back a long time, for Evelyn men-
tions it among the uses of the wood, though he,
too, considers beech ‘neither so apt for Timber,
nor Fuel.’ The concluding portion of his, also
very short, discourse on the beech illustrates one
of the habits of Continental life of old so gra-
phically and suggestively, as to be worth quoting :
‘But there is yet another benefit which this Tree
presents us; that its very /eaves which make a

IN THE BEECHWOODS 133

natural and most agreeable Canopy all the Summer ;
being gather’d about the fall, and somewhat before
they are much /frost-bitten, afford the best and
easiest mattresses in the world to lay under our
guilts instead of straw; because, besides their
tenderness and loose lying together, they continue
sweet for seven or eight years long; before which
time straw becomes musty, and hard. They are
thus used by divers persons of Quality in Dauphine,
and in Switzerland I have sometimes lain on them
to my great refreshment.’ Throughout France
and Germany beech is still the principal fuel used
for domestic purposes, as its heating power sur-
passes that of almost any of our other woods.
The beech grows well on most kinds of soil
that are of a fresh and light description, or on
sandy soils resting on a subsoil of a loamy or
marly nature; but its finest growth is attained
on a limy soil. The chalks and marls of the
ridges and spurs of the limestone hills forming
the backbone of the southern counties of Eng-
land still retain in many parts the remnants of
their original covering of beechwoods; and though
good returns are being obtained from such lands,
there can be little doubt that the closer applica-

134 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

tion of business principles in their management
would soon result in still better returns from
these woodlands. Hardy though the beech be,
and endowed as it is with a better capacity than
any other broad-leaved tree for protecting the
soil against the wasting effects of sun and wind
by reason of its dense crown of foliage, this
conservation of the productiveness of the land
can only be adequately secured and utilised to
its fullest degree if the beechwoods are kept
considerably thicker than is usually the case in
Britain. With regard to no kind of timber has it
here been customary to maintain such density of
crop and such careful utilisation and protection
of the soil as obtain in Continental forests; yet,
if there be any difference as to climate for the
regulation of a matter so important in its rela-
tion to the yield in timber, the advantage must
lie with us by reason of the greater relative
humidity of our insular climate. This favours
the density of the woods by enabling the trees
to bear a somewhat greater amount of shade,
just as a greater wealth of foliage is to be found
on cool fresh slopes than on hot dry exposures.
Certain indications were given towards the end

IN THE BEECHWOODS i3i

of the second chapter as to the apparent fact that
prices in Britain for timber of all sorts are almost
certain to rise considerably in the near future,
and that this rise in price will be permanent and
no mere flash in the pan. If these be duly con-
sidered, and found worthy of acceptance, then
the beech should henceforth acquire very much
greater importance as a woodland tree than has
hitherto been the case in this country.

Grown in pure crops as a timber tree, beech
has on limy soils great value as a producer of
income, but, apart from this more or less local
advantage, it will in many cases have a special
value for assisting materially towards the best de-
velopment of other and more remunerative kinds
of wood by reason of its capacity for bearing
shade, its protection of the ground through the
overshadowing of its dense crown, and its en-
richment of the soil through the formation of
good mould by the dead leaves thickly shed
each autumn.

On account of its heavy crown of dense foliage
it is ill suited as a standard in copse, or as a
timber tree in hedgerows; but in highwoods of
light-demanding trees, like oak, ash, larch, and

136 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

pine, an admixture of beech enables all the
different kinds of timber crops to attain greater
energy of growth, and a finer development alto-
gether, than when these are grown in pure crops.
Even below the surface of the ground such an
admixture of beech performs good service, as it
contributes towards more thorough oxygenation
of the soil through the great capacity of its
heart-shaped root-system, while symbiotic fungi
(Mycorhiza) living within the rootlets also exert
a chemical action in improving the soil. These
indirect advantages of the beech in improving
the soil and the growth of other kinds of trees
have not in the past been sufficiently recognised
in Britain, though they seem deserving of re-
cognition in a practical form wherever crops of
timber may be grown for profit as a regular
business, like farming.

Gayer, one of the greatest Continental authori-
ties, has said that it would be next to impossible
to grow the better classes of hardwood without
the assistance of the beech. Though this be
true for the dry climate of the European conti-
nent, the case is fortunately somewhat different
in our humid atmosphere. Thanks to our

IN THE BEECHWOODS 137

moister climate, even the most light-demanding
trees are not so emphatic in their demands for
light as in central Europe. Oak, elm, ash,
maple, and sycamore all bear a_ considerably
greater degree of shade here than in the interior
of the Continent. In many cases the three last-
named kinds of trees—in general more valuable
than the beech—should often, under suitable
management, be able to take over the rdle of
conserving the productivity of the soil by over-
shadowing it, and of protecting it against the dry-
ing and exhausting effects of sunshine and wind.
And there can be little doubt that, in most parts
of the British Isles, mixed crops of oak, elm,
ash, maple, and sycamore will be—a sufficient
protection of the soil being assumed—all the
more remunerative, the less the proportion of
beech introduced into them, except on soils of a
chalky or very limy nature.

Even by itself, however, beech when grown in
pure woods can yield no mean profit at the
present moment. This was shown recently in a
discussion on Forestry at the Surveyors’ Institu-
tion, where an estate agent practising in the
Chiltern Hills district stated that well-managed

138 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

beechwoods are returning five times, and in
many cases six times, the annual income that
the adjoining agricultural land is yielding. No
more profitable timber than beech, he is satisfied,
can be grown in this district, because at the pre-
sent time his firm is able to make from 1s. 4d. to
1s, 6d. per cubic foot of the best trees, and from
1od. to 1s. 3d. for smaller and rougher timber.
It is true that this does not compare with the
value of oak and ash, but these classes of timber
cannot be grown as ‘a crop’ in the same way
that beechwoods are treated and thinned at fre-
quent intervals.

The experience of Mr. Daniel Watney, a Past
President of the Institution, was also much to
the same effect. The best results from timber
with which he was acquainted came from the
Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire. In the case
of the West Wycombe estate, with which he
was concerned some few years ago in the suit
of Dashwood v. Magniac, the estate books for
over 100 years showed the annual income from
those woods as 30s. an acre. They are situated
on the tops of hills, on land which is not really
fit for agriculture, and which if it were broken

A BEECHWOOD ON THE CHILTERN HILLs

To face page 139

IN THE BEECHWOODS 139

up would certainly not be worth §s. an acre.
And then it must be remembered that they are
kept up entirely by natural reproduction, without
any attempt at planting, and there seemed no
reason why, so long as chair-making went on
in that district, they should not continue to
yield 30s. an acre per annum. ‘The tables given
in chapters ix and xi show that beechwoods in
Germany, on the better classes of soil, worked
with a rotation of 120 to 140 years, give an
average annual growth varying up to about 48
to 64 cubic feet (British measurement). It is
sometimes more; and well-managed woods in
the south of England should certainly not yield
less. The profit such largely-enhanced yield re-
presents is a very handsome one, which should
make it worth while for owners to manage their
woods on the most advanced economical prin-
ciples. It is certainly the fault neither of our
chalk soil nor of our humid climate that the
returns per acre are not so large here as on the
Continent.

One of the chief characteristics of the beech
as a forest tree is its dense foliage, indicating a
greater power of enduring shade than most of

140 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

the other broad-leaved trees. The natural effect
of this endowment is that when other trees are
grown along with the beech, these must be from
time to time protected against the latter during
thinning operations, otherwise the beech would
gradually crowd them out in course of time and
grow gregariously, forming pure woods.

The coppicing power of beech is somewhat
limited in comparison with that of most other
broad-leaved trees of our woodlands. It is,
indeed, only in comparatively few districts that
beech coppices prevail to any extent. It is really
only suitable for coppice or as underwood in
copse on limy soils, where the rotation is not
below from twenty to thirty years. After about
forty to fifty years of age the young trees, when
once the bark has become thick and hard, lose
their power of shooting from the stool. Hence
the best treatment of the beech is to grow it as
highwoods, and to reproduce it naturally from the
beech-nuts or mast produced in fair abundance
about once every three to five years.

When grown along with the oak, it is well to
cut it out in favour of the latter at about seventy
to eighty years of age, and then reproduce it from

IsduoOy MAIN ‘GOOM GIO ANNA NI NOILVYANTOAY TVANLVN

IN THE BEECHWOODS 141

seed and allow it to grow up as underwood, for
the protection of the soil. When the crop of
oak attains its maturity at about 150 years of
age, the whole can then be felled, with simul-
taneous natural regeneration, assisted by planting
to the extent that may be necessary to fill blanks
and to secure a proper distribution of the oak in
the new crop. At the same time an opportunity
is then given of introducing more valuable trees,
such as ash, larch, and the like, by planting them
here and there, singly or in small patches, in spots
specially adapted to their particular requirements.

On the Continent the cultivation of highwoods
of beech by natural regeneration from seed has
been brought to a great degree of perfection.
Where grown in pure forests, for the chief pur-
pose of being split up into fuel, the fall usually
takes place concurrently with regeneration, during
the eightieth to the hundredth year. When
grown for timber, however, the harvesting of the
mature wood and the formation of the new seed-
ling crop generally begin about the ninetieth year
and extend over about the next thirty years.
This system gives, along with other advantages,
security against late frosts in spring, which seed-

142, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

ling beech are rather apt to suffer from; for the
beech requires a certain amount of shade and
protection during its early growth.

Under this system the total area under beech
is divided into four main blocks, in which the
crops vary from 0-30, 30-60, 60-90, and go-120
years, and average 15, 45, 75, and 105 years re-
spectively, counting from the middle of the
period of regeneration. The natural regenera-
tion is effected by means of three classes of fell-
ings. First comes a ‘preparatory felling,’ when
any other kinds of trees, such as ash, sycamore,
or maple, growing in admixture with the beech,
are removed. The extra light thus given to
the beech promotes the formation of seed, and
gradually hardens the smooth stems against sun-
burn, while the opening up of the leaf canopy
also favours the decomposition of the dead leaves
and the formation of good mould within the
next four or five years. On limy soils prepara-
tory fellings of this sort are sometimes un-
necessary, as the cast foliage rots sooner than on
loams and sands, and there is more danger of
the ground being overrun with weeds. In this
felling only the smaller dominated stems are

IN THE BEECHWOODS 143

removed, so that about one-eighth of the cubic
contents of the crop is harvested. At this stage
useful preparation of the soil can be cheaply
effected by driving cattle into the woods or
by leading swine there for pannage. Stunted,
dwarfish, bushy saplings will usually be found
self-sown before this; but as they seldom de-
velop well, they should be cleared from the
ground to make way for the regular crop of
seedlings, while softwoods like birch or aspen
should be cut out as weeds.

The first time a good mast year comes round
after that, a ‘seed felling” is made by removing
from a quarter to one-third of the mature crop
still on the ground, the trees left being preferably
those girthing about forty to fifty inches at breast
height, and having shapely, high-set crowns. The
larger fall is made on rather dry soils to allow
the seedling crop to have the benefit of the night
dews, while the smaller quantity is removed in
places prone to rank growth of weeds. The
frequent driving of cattle through the woods
and pannage of swine during the mast year is
highly beneficial to the regeneration. Though
the pigs eat greedily of the beech-nuts, they break

144 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

up the ground with their snouts and embed the
seed well in the soil.

The third specific felling, forming the ‘ gradual
clearance’ of the old crop, extends over a long
period, during which the rate of increase on the
trees is large and profitable. It begins when the
seedling crop is about two years old, and the rate
at which it proceeds is mainly dependent on the
thriving of the latter. Where the seedlings show
themselves in want of more light and dew-fall,
the old trees must be removed; otherwise it is
profitable to retain the latter so long as they do
not interfere in any marked degree with the
growth of the young crop. Every two or three
years the area regenerated must be gone over,
and such trees removed as may seem necessary.
On dry, warm exposures the clearance has usually
to be effected within about six or eight years after
the good mast year from which the birth of the
young crop dates, but on the average it extends
over ten or twelve years from then, and may even
be prolonged over fifteen to twenty years on
moist soils having a cool northern exposure.

Beechwoods require a fair amount of tending.
During the early cleanings and weedings coppice-

IN THE BEECHWOODS 145

shoots of beech and other trees should be cut out,
as well as suckers of aspen and self-sown birch.
During the early thinnings the softwoods then
found should be removed along with the sup-
pressed poles among the main crop. The
thinnings should be moderate, but repeated at
intervals of about four or five years; and as the
crop advances in age, the use of the axe should
be somewhat anticipatory, to assist nature in
determining the selection of the dominant and
predominating stems. This is more particularly
the case on poor, dry patches of soil, where the
struggle for existence is longer and less decisive
than on more favourable situations.

The result of such regeneration is that, when
total clearance of the old trees has been effected,
the young crop of beech is scattered over the
area in larger or smaller patches of different
height, and differing also somewhat in age. It
is, therefore, usually not until about its tenth
year that the young crop closes up and forms
canopy. The further growth is then rapid, dense
thicket being formed, much thicker than results
from the treatment hitherto practised in England.

Throughout this early stage of development the
K

146 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

average annual growth in height reaches about
fifteen inches on favourable situations, and even
increases to about nineteen inches among the
predominant poles of twenty to thirty years of
age. On soils of a less favourable character the
growth is of course less, while it does not reach
its maximum till from ten to fifteen years later.
The thick fall of leaves, rich in potash, yields the
finest class of woodland mould, so that at this
stage of growth dense thickets of beech enrich
and improve the soil in a greater degree than any
other crop can. Stimulated thereby, the growth
in cubic contents proceeds so vigorously that
pure beech highwoods, on soils of only average
quality, yield over 8000 cubic feet (true measure-
ment) per acre; but, unfortunately, only from 10
to 20 per cent. of this is usually classifiable as
first-class timber, the bulk of it being too small
for reckoning as such.

CHAPTER V

The Other
Hardwoods

o_Rackyem 97”

OF the remaining hardwoods, the elm offers
peculiarities which distinguish it from the others.
Scots, mountain, or wych elm (U/mus montana),
also known locally as wych hazel, is indigenous
to Britain and seeds freely, but throws up few
suckers; while the English, or common small-
leaved elm (U. campestris), a native of Italy
introduced by the Romans, and now forming per-
haps the most typical feature in English rural
landscape, in our cooler climate only forms
germinable seed during exceptionally warm

summers. To compensate for this, however, it
147

148 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

is endowed by nature with a strong reproductive
capacity in throwing up stoles or suckers from
its roots, in which respect it is only equalled by
the aspen. Signs of uncommonly strong repro-
ductive power are often to be seen in spring,
when stems that have been felled, logged, and
dragged out of the hedgerows in winter send
out a flush of twigs here and there in making a
final recuperative effort.

Both kinds of elm are easily reproducible
by layering. Indeed, this strong reproductive
capacity is often a curse to farmers, as the
elm, when standing in hedgerows at the edges
of fields and meadows, is prone to throw out
shallow surface-roots, like the ash, from which
suckers are apt to be sent up. Last spring, in
Herefordshire, I saw elm root-strands interfer-
ing so much with the work of the plough that
they had to be hacked through, and this even at
a distance of thirty-five yards from where the tree
stood. It is true that in this case there was a
deep bank and ditch on the far side of the tree,
but this shows all the same how hedgerow timber,
ash and elm especially, can interfere with hus-

bandry, by impeding the plough and by robbing

THE OTHER HARDWOODS _ 149

the soil of part of the food-supplies intended for
the field crops.

For proper development the elms require a
warm situation and rather a fresh soil, as they
transpire water freely through their foliage. Even
when growing on what appears to be rather dry
land their deep, heart-shaped roots provide them
with no inconsiderable supply of moisture from
the subsoil. Hence a warm, sunny exposure, as
in avenues and parks, and a fresh or moist, deep
sandy loam are where the finest growth of elm
is to be expected. Though breaking early into
leaf, it suffers little from late frosts. But the
early frosts in autumn soon wither the yellowing
leaves and bring them to the ground. It is a
light-demanding tree, its requirements in this
respect being often almost on a par with those of
the oak. But as coppice on moist soil it often
does fairly well under standards which do not
overshadow it too heavily. The demand for
light shown by elm trees of large size is, how-
ever, sO pronounced, that groups of pure elms
do not long maintain themselves in close canopy ;
and this renders it unsuitable for growth in pure
woods, even if this were profitable, which is not

150 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

the case. Holinshed’s remarks, made more
than three hundted years ago, are thus still
applicable to-day: ‘Of elme we have great store
in everie high waie and elsewhere, yet have I
not seene thereof anie togither in woods or
forests, but where they have beene first planted
and then suffered to spread at their owne
willes.’

When oak was reserved mainly for the needs
of shipbuilding, the uses to which elm was put
were many. ‘Elm is a Timber, Evelyn says,
‘of most singular Use; especially where it may
lie continually dry, or wet inextreames; therefore
proper for Water- works, Mills, Pipes, Pumps,
Ship-planks beneath the Water-line; and some
that has be found burried in Boggs, has turn’d
like the most polish’d, and hardest Ebony, only
discern’d by the grain: Also for Wheel-wrighis,
Kerbs of Coppers, Featheridg,’and Weather-boards,
Dressers, and sundry other imployments.’

During the last century hollowed elm stems
were used in London and other great cities for
water-conduit before the introduction of leaden
and cast-iron pipes, while it also commanded a
high price for making the keels of large ships.

THE OTHER HARDWOODS - 151

Most of it is now used for furniture, and for
making coffins.

Thriving well even amid the smoke of great
towns, it is, by reason of its graceful branch and
twig formation, one of the best of our park trees.
Unfortunately, however, it is apt to have its
large branches and heavy limbs crack and fall
without warning on hot, still days in summer ;
and this can only be prevented by a species of
mutilation, such as is to be noticed in all the
parks of London. A periodical cry goes forth
in certain newspapers ‘against this so-called ‘ van-
dalism’ on the part of the officers in charge of
the Royal parks; but it is probably only through
their careful and considerate action in carrying
out toppings and loppings, though never wantonly
and unnecessarily as is often represented, that so
very, very few accidents have hitherto occurred
in our much-frequented pleasure-grounds of the
metropolis.

As elm has so much in common with ash,
maple, &c., when grown as part of a woodland
crop, its treatment under such circumstances can
best take place as subsequently described for
these other trees.all grouped together.

152, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

The ash (Fraxinus excelsior) is one of the
most graceful of our forest trees. In grace and
elegance it must, indeed, at times yield to the
birch when growing on the mountain side, or by
the edge of a lake or brook; but the ash has,
both in the shape of its crown of foliage and in
the delicate bluish-green colour of the leaves,
attractions which distinguish it above most of
our other trees. Cobbett gave a due appreciation
of the ash when he wrote, in his Rural Rides
through Huntingdon, that, ‘In the hedge-rows,
in the plantations, everywhere the ash is fine. . . .
We have no tree that attains a greater height
than the ash, and certainly none that equals it
in beauty of leaf. It bears pruning better than
any other tree. Its timber is one of the most
beautiful; and as underwood and firewood it far
excels all others of English growth.’

It is now much too valuable for fuel, and in
any case beech is better for that purpose. But
ash is at the present moment one of the most
profitable trees that can be grown. The best
ash, that of Nottingham and Leicester, fetches,
dressed and ready for coach-builders, up to
41 per ton, or nearly 4s. 5d. a cubic foot.

THE OTHER HARDWOODS 153

Even in the rough log well-grown ash can com-
mand about 2s. a cubic foot, and often consider-
ably more; while the coach-building, agricultural
implement, and furniture trades would be glad
to have far larger supplies of it than are at pre-
sent obtainable in Britain, because British ash is
of better quality than that imported from abroad.
No timber grown in our woods can compare with
it in toughness and elasticity, and its value as
a timber tree is increased by the rapidity of its
growth, for timber of the finest quality can be
obtained at about sixty years of age. Even the
small produce of coppice and underwoods is valu-
able for hop-poles, crates, and the like, while in
some places as much as £15 an acre is, I have
been recently informed, obtained for ash-shoots
cut for walking-sticks and umbrella-handles. ‘I
have been credibly inform’d that one person hath
planted so much of this one sort of Timéer in his
life time as hath been valu’d worth fifty thousand
pounds to be bought. These are pretty encourage-
ments for a small and pleasant industry.’ Thus
wrote Evelyn nearly 250 years ago; and what was
then worth £50,000, would now be worth some-
thing between five and ten times that amount

154 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

according to its quality and dimensions. But it
had more than a mere market value in those
ancient days. Gilbert White tells us how pollard
ash trees were still standing which had been
cleft and held asunder by wedges, so that rup-
tured children, stripped naked, should be passed
through the cleft; and as the parts of the tree,
beplastered with loam and swathed in bands,
grew together again, so the babes became cured
of their infirmity.

Another curious piece of old folk-lore was
the veneration paid to the ‘shrew-ash,’ usually
some old pollard tree, whose twigs and branch-
lets, used as stroking-rods, had the power of
curing horses, cattle, or sheep of the pain in
the limbs and anguish caused by a shrew-mouse
running over them—or what we now call rheu-
matism, and ascribe to other causes. A ‘shrew-
ash’ was made by boring a hole into an ash stem,
placing a live shrew-mouse in it, and plugging it
in with now long-forgotten incantations. Once
medicated in this way the shrew-ash retained its
healing virtue so long as it lived, and in the good
old days every village and each farmyard had a
tree of this sort always ready for an emergency.

THE OTHER HARDWOODS _ 155

Ash is in all respects a hardy tree, though it is
very apt to lose the terminal buds of its shoots.
This forces on it a typically-forked habit of
growth, favourable to the production of prettily-
grained furniture wood, but spoiling the bole for
ordinary technical purposes. It is a very common
tree in hedgerows, though it does great damage
in the fields by sending out long surface-roots.
It accommodates itself to most soils and situa-
tions not too high-lying and exposed, but its
most vigorous growth and its best development
are attained on a fresh, deep, light, loamy soil,
and in soils of a somewhat limy description. On
heavy clay land or dry sandy soil it often grows
but indifferently, and at an early age shows signs
that the situation is not favourable to it. Having
a high rate of transpiration through the foliage,
it requires to draw a considerable quantity of
moisture from the soil, and in dry localities it
is one of the first trees to shed its leaves in early
autumn. Hence moist situations suit the ash,
although not such places as permit moisture to
collect and stagnate in the subsoil.

The ash does not, like the elm, attain any great
longevity. Its marketable maturity in woodlands

156 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

is obtained about the age of seventy or eighty
years. On the most favourable classes of soil
it will often pay well only to fell it at eighty or
a hundred years, but in less favourable situations
it may have to be harvested at about sixty years
of age to escape the danger of becoming black
in the heart and unsound in consequence of a
fungous disease caused by Necétria ditissima. Par-
ticularly common in soils of a very limy nature
this disease soon works its way up from the butt
into the top of the bole and the main branches,
and renders the tree unfit for timber. Where
prevalent the disease often attacks the ash while
still in the earlier stages of growth, and pro-
mising young plantations are sometimes very
speedily and completely ruined from this cause.
Seedlings also suffer, on soils unsuited for ash,
from another fungous disease due to Phytophthora
omnivora, which also often attacks beech seedlings
at the time of their germination.

Wherever seed-bearers are in the immediate
neighbourhood, ash comes up freely on most
kinds of soil. ‘Ash cometh up everie where
of it selfe, and with everie kind of wood,’ Holin-
shed truly remarks. In some of the beechwoods

THE OTHER HARDWOODS © 157

of the Cotswold Hills the seedling growth of ash
comes up thick and: beautifully—only, in many
cases, to be eaten down by rabbits. Strongly
endowed as it is with recuperative power in out-
growing injuries, even the ash cannot outlive
being eaten down year after year by rabbits.

It also springs very freely from the stool,
throwing up a fine flush of straight rods of
vigorous growth. As coppice and underwood in
copse it can stand a fair amount of overshadow-
ing on good fresh soil, and even benefits by a
light shade protecting it against frost, while
under favourable circumstances it also throws up
suckers as well as stool-shoots. During the
later stages of its growth it exhibits distinct
signs of being essentially a light-demanding tree,
like the oak and the elm, and therefore becomes
impatient of shade. Like them, too, it is apt to
become dry-topped and stag-headed if suddenly
exposed to light when a large tree. With its deep
roots, light foliage, and tough wood, it, how-
ever, differs entirely from the elm in being little
liable to be thrown or broken by wind. Along
with the oak and the larch it forms one of the
most profitable kinds of trees that can at present

158 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

be grown as standards in copsewoods. Indeed,
owing to the much larger number of trees that
can thus be retained as standards without unduly
overshadowing the coppice, ash and larch will in
many cases prove more profitable than oak in
this respect ; and such is certainly one of the best
methods of growing ash.

On marshy lands of the better class, where
oak can be grown with advantage, a sprinkling
of ash often improves the growth of the crops;
and patches of ash in the better parts of the alder
groves can be made to add considerably to the
returns, such patches being underplanted during
the later stages of their development. At the
present moment the cultivation of ash on soils
suitable for its growth seems a very attractively-
remunerative sort of investment, while the facts
that it seeds freely, can be propagated so easily,
and can be grown to the best advantage in
mixed crops along with beech, oak, maples, &c.,
make it comparatively easy to raise and handle
as part of a woodland crop.

All of the three kinds of maple common in
Britain, the maple or Norway maple (cer pla-
tanoides), the sycamore, great maple, or Scots

THE OTHER HARDWOODS 159

plane (4. pseudoplatanus), and the common or
field maple (4. campestre), can be reckoned among
the trees of the woodland. But the last named
is only to be found in and above hedges or
here and there among the underwood in copses,
whereas the other two larger species not only
thrive in the undergrowth, but form valuable
timber trees, especially when grown along with
beech in rather moist localities.

In Evelyn’s time maple and sycamore timbers
were in good repute. ‘The Timber (of Maple)
is far superiour to Beech for all uses of the Turner,
who seeks it for Dishes, Trays, Trenchers, €Fc., as
the Yoyner for Tables, Inlayings, and for the
delicateness of the grain when the kmurs and
nodosities are rarely diapered, which does much
advance its price: Also for the lightness (under
the name yer) imploy’d often by those who
make Musical-instruments. But there is a larger
sort, which we call the Sycamor . . . is excellent
for Cart and Plow-timber, being light, tough,
and not much inferior to 4sh it self.’ By the
end of last century, and far into the present one,
the fashion had changed; for there is a fashion
in the use of different woods, and it is not

160 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

necessarily the best kinds that can be brought
with profit on the market. Thus Gilpin says of
the maple, ‘Its wood is of little value, and it
is therefore rarely suffered to increase’; while
Cobbett, in a passage very characteristic of his
general style, says, ‘It is mere brushwood ; and
of no more use as a tree, than the poppies, or
wild parsnip, or wild carrot, are as cattle-food.
Our Maple is a weed of the woods, and we burn
it, because we know not what else to do with it.
. .. The timber of our Sycamore is white and
soft, and not valuable by any means.’

Fashion, shaped no doubt by necessity, has
again swung back to the good opinion of the
wood of both maple and sycamore held two
hundred and fifty years ago. Sycamores of large
size and good growth can be sold at prices
running up to over two shillings a cubic foot,
and much the same price could be obtained for
maple if large supplies of it were available.
And the capacity of both of these excellent
timber trees for coming up as ‘a weed of the
woods’ gives the clearest indication possible
that their cultivation should be encouraged as
largely as may be practicable in copses and high-

THE OTHER HARDWOODS 161

woods. Their rapidity in growth is often re-
markable, and they are bound to prove a good
source of revenue in well-managed woodlands.
Sycamore and maple planted in 1868 to 1871,
upon high land on the Earl of Selborne’s Black-
moor estate in Hants, girthed up to three feet
in September 1899, and they had already seeded
themselves freely in blank places throughout
portions of the plantation. Here is a description
of this small plantation, formerly an oak grove,
of 24 acres known as Highfield Copse: ‘A good,
deep, fresh soil varying from sand to sandy loam,
sloping very gently towards W., at which end
the soil is a loamy clay. A mixture of Oak,
from 4 to 6 feet in girth, originally standards
in copse, with Sycamore, Maple, Elm, Lime,
Beech, and other trees planted about 1868 to
1871. Some of the Maple and Sycamore now
girth up to 3 feet at breast-height. The crop
now forms full canopy in places, but in others
there are blanks; and in some of the blanks
self-sown sycamore are coming up abundantly.
Where it still exists, the coppice is mostly of
hazel, but patchy, with birch here and there.’

In woodlands managed on business principles,
3

162 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

mainly for profit, sycamore deserves to receive
the preference, because it is more truly the tree
of the woods than the maple; while the latter,
one of the first trees to flush into leaf in spring,
and with light yellow autumnal foliage contrast-
ing well with the dark greens and russet hues of
other trees, will always in parks and ornamental
portions of estates claim the advantage over the
sycamore with its heavier foliage, its greater
tendency to run into big branches, and its
gloomier aspect.

As forest trees, both are energetic in growth,
and can attain dimensions as large as the oak or
the beech. They have both rather a tendency
to run to branches, which can only be checked
by growing them in somewhat close canopy.
Grown along with beech, they soon shoot ahead
of it in upward growth, but later on they are
overtaken. Then they must either be thinned
out or else protected by cutting out the beech
interfering with them, whichever operation pro-
mises to be ultimately the more profitable.

Like the ash, maple and sycamore coppice
freely and can stand a considerable amount of
shade while young. But as they grow up into

THE OTHER HARDWOODS _ 163

trees they show signs that, except on good, fresh
land, they then require a considerable amount of
light to thrive well. Though not so emphatic
as oak, ash, or elm in their demand for light,
they are neither of them, not even the sycamore,
capable of bearing shade so well as the beech.
This becomes apparent if the interior of the
crown of foliage be examined, when it will usually
be found that what looks like density as viewed
from outside is rather due to the completeness of
the exterior foliage than to any great production
of leaves within the crown. The density of
foliage is superficial rather than real and solid.
On poor, somewhat dry land the requirements
for light become of course more marked than on
good moist land; but in many of the oak groves
and copses a free admixture of maple and syca-
more will often be able to protect the soil much
in the same manner, though perhaps not alto-
gether to the same degree, as beech ; and wherever
this may be the case, the maples are more likely
to yield a fair profit than the beech. When such
woods are being coppiced, the maples should be
stubbed close to the ground, as the soft stools
are otherwise apt to decay prematurely. As they

164 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

are also apt to lose their reproductive power after
being coppiced once or twice, renewals will have
to be made if self-sown seedlings be not abundant ;
and layering of outside shoots will often prove
the cheapest and easiest method of providing the
new crop.

Both maples thrive best in rather humid
localities, and in the vicinity of the sea-coast. A
considerable amount of soil-moisture is also re-
quisite for their best development, and the finest
growth is attainable where there is a fair amount
of moisture both in the soil and the subsoil.
Where the land is wet or the subsoil water-
logged, however, their larger development is apt
to be checked, and they remain stunted, or die
off prematurely. Except as regards dangers from
late spring frosts in damp, low-lying localities
they are hardy trees, and they are not at all difficult
to grow as regards soil. Few of our forest trees,
indeed, thrive on so many different soils and
situations as sycamore, which does well on all
sorts of lands from light sand to stiff clay, and
from low-lying, but well-drained, sheltered tracks
on to the breezy uplands, and even on wind-swept
exposures. But, as with most of the hardwoods,

THE OTHER HARDWOODS _ 165

good loams of course suit them best, and especi-
ally such as contain a fair amount of lime. They
are, therefore, both eminently suitable, but par-
ticularly sycamore, for growth in the beechwoods
of the Chilterns, Cotswolds, and other hills in
the chalk districts.

Like the ash, they attain their physical maturity
and reach very profitable marketable dimensions
at a much earlier age than oak. In many cases
they will perhaps yield the best returns at about
sixty to seventy years of age, although it may
often prove advantageous to let them stand till
eighty or ninety years or more, where timber of
large dimensions is specially well paid.

The Sweet or Spanish Chestnut (Castanea vul-
garis), one of the trees introduced into Britain
during the Roman period, resembles the oak in
its general appearance at a distance, its longevity,
its deep root-system, its broad crown, and strong,
spreading gnarled branches, and in the general
appearance and the great durability of its timber.
Many of the great beams in old churches and
other buildings are of this wood. In parks, the
rich golden colour of its foliage in autumn forms
a beautiful contrast to other trees with darker

166 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

leaves, but as a tree of the forest it is not so pro-
fitable in the highwoods as many of our indige-
nous trees. Here it makes considerable demands
on warmth of situation, or sheltered localities,
and though very moderate in its requirements
as to mineral strength of the soil, it needs a deep
sandy or sandy loam to make really good growth.
Cold land and stiff clays are not favourable to its
development ; even stony or gravelly land, warm
and well sheltered, is better than these. It ex-
hibits antipathy to limy land, and even a small
percentage of carbonate of lime in the soil at once
affects its development. Another drawback to its
cultivation in highwoods is that it often at about
the age of fifty to seventy years becomes unsound
with ring-shakes, which spoil it for beams and scant-
ling. Its wood is useful for such purposes as gate-
posts, fencing, hop-poles, cask-hoops, and the like,
all of which are procurable from coppice-growth.
Rarely maturing its seed in Britain, like the other
non-indigenous trees, English elm, lime, poplar,
and some willows, it has a very strong reproduc-
tive capacity both in the form of stool-shoots and
root-suckers. It shoots freely from the stool,
and the stubbs retain their coppicing power for a

THE OTHER HARDWOODS _ 167

very long time. Indeed, in reproductive power it
excels our indigenous trees, as stools can throw
out shoots even up to about one hundred years of
age. Hence it forms an excellent underwood in
copses where the overshadowing is not excessive,
though it can hardly be truly reckoned among the
shade-bearing kinds of trees. Grown as coppice
under standards of larch, Scots pine, and oak, it
will often yield good returns on land of a deep
sandy nature; and in conifer plantations requiring
underplanting it will be found worthy of favour-
able consideration. On rather poor classes of
land, except where it is apt to suffer from late
frosts in spring, it will sometimes yield better
returns as coppice than any other kind of under-
wood. It therefore seems specially adapted for
the underplanting of old larch and pine woods
which have become so open in canopy as to be
unable any longer to protect the soil from the ex-
hausting and deteriorating effects of sun and
wind, When thus forming underwood it should
be cut over for the first time at about ten years
of age, and then worked with a rotation of about
fifteen years till the overwood comes to the fall.
In cutting coppice, low felling, close to the

168 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

ground, should always be the rule, but in addition
to this the reproductive capacity of the chestnut
for throwing up shoots and suckers is increased
by heaping earth on the stubbs that are left.
As coppice it protects the soil well, and en-
riches it with a good mould. Hence, where small
material is remunerative, coppices of chestnut can
be worked with a lower rotation than any other
kind of crop, except hazel and osier-holts, without
unduly exposing the soil to deterioration.

As previously remarked, ash, maple, and syca-
more are all trees well worthy of cultivation in
highwoods, and the treatment is much the same
for all the three. In the case of each of these, its
proper position is that of a subordinate tree grow-
ing along with others, and best of all with beech,
of a somewhat slower growth and better able to
protect the soil against deterioration. On many
a hillside, dingles and small water-courses will be
found where growth of ash can be profitably en-
couraged ; while on good, rather moist, low-lying
patches of ground a mixture of oak, ash, maple,
and sycamore, or even of willows and alder on
wet spots, will add materially to the returns ob-
tainable. When grown along with oak principally,

THE OTHER HARDWOODS _ 169

it will usually be most remunerative to utilise
them about their sixtieth or seventieth year, so
that underplanting may take place for the benefit
of the main crop; whereas, if grown with beech,
they can remain as long as they are sound and
continue to increase ata profitable rate. No dog-
matism can be safely hazarded as of general applica-
tion in such cases, for the whole of the operations
of Forestry are so essentially ruled by local con-
siderations and market requirements, that only the
principles of management can be broadly sketched ;
while these very principles themselves, as well as
their particular application, must be modified by
what promises to be most advantageous under the
given conditions and the future prospects of the
timber market.

When grown in highwoods with oak, ash and
sycamore will often, on being felled and removed,
throw up a sufficient crop of stool-shoots together
with ash-suckers, to obviate any necessity for
spending much in the formation of underwood;
and if the canopy has been at all light previously,
there may be quite a large number of self-sown
seedlings on the ground, chiefly of sycamore.
Where such conditions obtain, on the better

170 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

classes of woodland soils, a fair undergrowth will
often be formed with comparatively little outlay
except for layering of stool-shoots and dibbling in
seed on prepared patches, and the returns from
this should soon prove remunerative enough to
form ‘pretty encouragements for a small and
pleasant industry,’ as we have seen Evelyn already
point out long ago.

Other two hardwood trees of minor importance
in Britain are the Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) and
the Robinia or Locust-tree (Robinia pseudacacia),
yet they each deserve attention as yielding good
timber.

Hornbeam is seldom allowed to reach its
attainable dimensions as a timber tree, being
mostly relegated to hedges, though under favour-
able circumstances it can grow to a height of
sixty or seventy feet, with a girth of from two to
three feet in diameter. Its hard, heavy, cross-
grained wood is difficult to work up, but is better
than beech for such purposes as work-benches,
boxes for planes, handles of tools, wedges, hubs
of cart wheels, and anything requiring great
toughness. And it is the only one among our
forest trees whose wood exceeds that of beech in

THE OTHER HARDWOODS _ 171

heat-producing power as fuel. Chalk lands do
not suit it well, while its best dimensions are
attained on stiff clayey soils, or moist loamy sands
and marshy lands. Dry shallow soil and a warm
exposure are not favourable to its growth asa
tree, although it still coppices freely there.
Shade-bearing like the beech, and hardy against
frosts, it may sometimes be of use for under-
planting in places that are too moist for that
tree, or for good growth of the more profitable
maple, sycamore, ash, hazel, and the like. Deep
stubbing in coppice-woods makes hornbeam throw
out stoles as well as stool-shoots. As it reproduces
itself freely as underwood, it may often be of use
in filling up blanks in frost-holes where nothing
more profitable can be made to grow.

The Robinia is deserving of more attention
than it has yet received as a timber tree. Rapid
in growth, and hardy in most parts of Britain, it
produces a good, heavy, hard wood, durable for
both outdoor and indoor work. Tough and
elastic, it is specially suitable for wooden pins in
deck planking and similar uses. It is easy to
work, but much handling of it is apt to cause
sores occasionally, owing to some irritant secre-

172 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

tion it contains. Lighter than oak, ash, or
maple, it equals them in durability. It can be
grown on all lands of a light or sandy description,
and can thrive, thanks to the symbiotic aid of a
fungus, on very poor land—a characteristic it
shares with many other leguminous plants. But
its finest growth is in warm localities, free from
late frosts in spring and sheltered from heavy
winds. Where such land lies vacant in the
vicinity of hop-districts, robinia coppice worked
with a rotation of ten to fifteen years should
prove very remunerative. Even small thinnings
of coppice could yield good withes and hoops for
casks, hurdles, and the like. It seeds freely and
can be easily regenerated, and the bean-pods are
toothsome to cattle.

Among hardwood shrubs Hazel (Corylus Avel-
lana) deserves more than a mere passing notice.
It often forms a very profitable coppice yielding
good small material for hurdle-~making, bean
and pea sticks, crates, cask-hoops, and the like.
Indeed, in many parts of southern England, as
in portions of Gloucestershire away from the
districts where hop-poles are in special demand,
this hardy shrub is sometimes entitled to be

THE OTHER HARDWOODS _ 173

considered one of the most profitable kinds of
coppice when grown either pure or mixed with
ash. If freed from overshadowing by standard
trees, hazel grows vigorously and becomes
marketable in about seven years’ time. Its finest
growth is obtained on land of a loamy or clayey
description. There is no special difficulty about
its cultivation, the main point requiring attention
being to see that blanks in the stock are carefully
filled up at each fall of the crop.

Of all the hardwoods dealt with in this chapter,
ash is best suited to be grown as a standard tree
in copses, either by itself or else along with oak.
Its natural habit of growth gives it peculiar quali-
fications for such a position, and the present
prospects of the timber market point to this as
being an exceedingly promising form of wood-
land crop. But detailed consideration of its
treatment there will more appropriately find a
place in the chapter on Copsewoods.

CHAPTER VI

The Softwoods—Alder, Birch,
Lime, Willows, & Poplars

"THE Common Alder (A/nus glutinosa),indigenous
to these Isles, is still a very much more common
tree than the Hoary Alder (4. zucana) introduced
by the Romans; and only the former is of any
importance in our woodlands. Hardy, suffering
but little from late frosts while easily repairing
the damage thus done, and not injured much by
temporary inundations, it is to be found along
the margins of most streams and rivers, and in
marshy lands even of a boggy description. As
Evelyn truly remarks, ‘The A/der is of all other

174

THE SOFTWOODS 175

the most faithful lover of wattery and boggy
places, and those most despis’d weeping parts,
or water-falls of Forests. Moisture is indeed
a necessity for it, as it can make no great fight
against drought; and it thrives on land that is
even too wet for willows and poplars. But,
whenever the land becomes too dry for good
growth of alder, a more profitable kind of crop
can easily be raised. On the waste, swampy
lands where alder is now mostly to be found,
self-produced and often little cared for, want
of management allows it to spread greatly and
run much into branches; whereas, if it were
kept in something like close canopy, it could
easily be made to attain a height of about
fifty to sixty feet, with a proportionate girth
on favourable soil.

The wood and the bark of the alder are in less
repute to-day than they once were. Like elm
timber it is durable for use underground, or, if
kept dry, in places where there is no frequent
alternation from damp to dry atmosphere, the
conditions favouring attacks of destructive fungi.
All the softwoods, in fact, are much more dur-
able when thus preserved against damp, and this

176 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

circumstance gave rise to such rural adages as
that about alder in Dorset-—

‘Thatch me well and keep me dry,
Heart of oak I will defy.’

In the midland counties the same idea is ex-
pressed in very similar words as regards poplar
and willow.

Alder wood is largely used for making herring
barrels and as charcoal for gunpowder; while
on the Continent it is much used for cigar boxes.
Its superiority for gunpowder has long been
known, at any rate since before the days of
Evelyn: ‘The poles of Ader are as useful as
those of Willows; but their coals far exceed
them, especially for Gun-powder.’

Before that, however, it had also other minor
uses, for Holinshed speaks of ‘the alder, whose
barke is not unprofitable to die blacke withall,
and therefore much used by our countrie wives
in colouring their knit hosen.’ In localities
where the wood can be disposed of profitably to
a powder factory, or for clog-making or other pur-
poses, alder coppice can prove very remunerative.
But the better classes of land, which would yield

THE SOFTWOODS 177

the largest returns, could, in the great majority
of cases in Britain, be cultivated more remunera-
tively than under crops of alder coppice, the form
of treatment most suitable for this tree. The
returns may vary very widely, however, according
to the general quality of the soil.

Where the larger sizes of alder are marketable,
coppices can be worked even with a rotation of
forty to fifty years without outreaching their
capacity of shooting again from the stool. On
inferior classes of soil, however, it is best to keep
the rotation down to about twenty years. Alder
coppice has, more than any other kind of coppice,
much resemblance to a young highwood crop,
because two or three dominating shoots soon
forge their way ahead and suppress the weak-
ling rods; for, although on good, moist, loamy
soil it can bear a considerable amount of shade,
the alder really requires a large amount of
light on land not particularly suitable to its
growth.

Alder is well worth attention and cultivation
on low-lying land, while a judicious sprinkling
of ash and oak on the better patches of ground

can often be made to add considerably to the
M

178 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

value of the crop. In all such cases, however,
the question should first be considered whether
a little expense in drainage and then a much
larger proportion of ash, sycamore, and other
trees may not promise more solid advantages
than crops of alder.

The best time of cutting alder coppice is
when the ground is frozen hard, while the fall
must be at once brought out to the drier
parts. The drawback to this is that the stools
are then rather apt to chip. If the land
be not too marshy for late autumn or early
spring felling, then the main point to be con-
sidered is the danger of flooding at the time
of the flush of the leaf. Where this is to be
feared, it is well to leave a stump to protect
the shoots against immersion and against rank
growth of grass and other weeds; otherwise, of
course, the curfe should be low down almost
flush with the ground. In filling blanks and
keeping a good thick stock of crop, planting
is preferable to sowing, as such places are usually
prone to a strong growth of weeds, apt to choke
the young seedlings.

Own cousin to the alder botanically, the Birch

THE SOFTWOODS 179

(Betula alba) is often found growing along with
it in marshy land, though less frequently by the
sides of streams meandering through pasture
lands, where willow, poplar, and hazel are its
chief associates. The birch is the most graceful
of all our forest trees. Whether as a tree of
the mountain, rising up from the heather-clad
hillside,—where its silvery bark forms a beautiful
contrast to the dark-coloured heather, while its
light-green delicate foliage stands out clear
against the blue sky,—or hanging pendulously
over the margin of a lake or the bank of some
murmuring brook, there are few objects in the
vegetable world which can compare with the
birch in the grace and delicacy of its beauty,
and perhaps none which can surpass it in this
particular regard. Small wonder, then, that it
has been so often sung by the poets and painted
by the artists of Britain. Its gracefulness is the
leading feature in M‘Whirter’s ‘Three Graces’
and ‘The Lady of the Lake.’ The same
charm called forth Coleridge’s description of it
as

‘most beautiful
Of forest trees—the Lady of the Woods.’

180 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

But more graphic still is Scott’s couplet, telling
how, as the Last Minstrel rode along,

‘He passed where Newark’s stately tower
Looks out from Yarrow’s birchen bower.’

The most graceful and delicately beautiful of
all our forest trees, it is at the same time one of
the hardiest. Indeed, but for the aspen, it would
be absolutely ‘Ae very hardiest of all of them.
The only other of our forest trees which can at
all compare with it in power of accommodating
themselves to poor soils and to extreme varia-
tions of summer warmth and wintry cold, are
the Scots pine and the aspen; and the latter is
the only tree whose geographical distribution,
throughout 35° of latitude and 140° of longi-
tude, exceeds that of the birch. As regards its
power of accommodating itself to different kinds
of poor soil, nothing can well be added to what
Evelyn wrote when he said of the birch that the
land on which it is possible to grow it ‘cannot
well be too barren; for it will thrive both in
the dry, and the wet, Sand and Stony, Marshes
and Bogs; the water-falls, and uliginous parts of
Forests that hardly bear any grass, do many

THE SOFTWOODS 181

times spontaneously produce it in abundance
whether the place be high, or low, and nothing
comes amiss to it.’

One lingers fondly over gentle John Evelyn’s
words. Even for ‘this despicable tree’ he has
a good word: ‘For though Birch be of all
other the worst of Timber ; yet has it its various
uses, as for the Husband-mans Ox-yoaks; also
for Hoops, Paniers, Brooms, Wands, Bavin and
Fuel; great and small-coal, which last is made
by charking the slenderest brush, and summities
of the twigs; as of the tops and loppings M.
Howards new Tanne: Lastly, of the whitest part
of the o/d wood, found commonly in doating
Birches, is made the grounds of our Gallants
Sweet-powder ; to say nothing here of the Magis-
terial Fasces, for which antiently the Cudgels
were us’d by the Lictor ; as now the gentler Rods
by our tyrannical Pedagogues.’

To-day the wood is not yet in good repute,
as it is not durable. Like alder, it is used for
gunpowder and as staves for herring-barrels, but
perhaps its most important use is for making
reels or bobbins for thread factories, for which
purposes branches down to one inch in diameter

182 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

can be utilised. Many of the trees in the Scot-
tish highlands are thus made use of, though
little indeed is done to improve the growth of
the trees or to make them yield a better class
of wood suitable for furniture, turnery, cart-
making, and the like.

Birch is, on land of rather a wet than a
dry nature, very frequently found growing along
with the Aspen or Trembling Poplar (Populus
tremula), ‘whereof our fletchers make their
arrowes, as Holinshed tells us; and there is so
much that is common to both of them, as trees of
the woodlands, that they can most conveniently
be treated of together. They are both essenti-
ally light-demanding trees; in fact, they make
greater demands on light than any other kinds
of broad-leaved trees. Like all such trees, they
have a deep root-system,—though the direct
connection between deep roots and a very pro-
nounced demand for light, as in oak, larch,
and Scots pine, is not clear. By means of this
they are enabled to obtain a good supply of
water from deep down in the subsoil, even
when the surface of the ground may appear
dry. But birch and aspen possess, in the most

THE SOFTWOODS 183

remarkable degree among all the other light-
demanding trees, the two characteristics of rapi-
dity in growth upwards and thinness of foliage.
Their hardiness against frost, their rapidity in
growth, and the comparative lightness of the
shadow they cast around them, qualify them
excellently, and especially the birch, for acting
as a nurse to species like oak, ash, chestnut, beech,
&c., in places where they are likely to be
nipped and damaged by late frosts in spring.
When once these kindly offices have been per-
formed, however, birch and. aspen should be
at once cut out, else they only interfere with
the growth and the healthy normal development
of the more valuable young trees desired as the
crop. Even then much trouble is often caused
by the stool-shoots of the birch and the suckers
thrown up in profusion by the aspen, as both
trees are strongly reproductive when thus felled.
It is often wonderful how long a hold on life
the roots of aspen seem to have; for the suckers
often spring up very freely when mature crops
of timber are being felled, even though it be
long years since the aspen have been cut out.
And such stoles can prove noxious weeds before

184 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

they are finally suppressed in favour of the new
crop about to be formed. This of itself unfits
them for standards in copse, though otherwise
their light overshadowing of the underwood
would suit the position admirably—
« And variable as the shade,
By the light quivering aspen made.’

On highwood areas clear felled for regenera-
tion, as sometimes happens with conifer crops,
birch, aspen, and willow, the trees producing seed
in largest quantities, and especially the former
two, often spring up freely as self-sown seed-
lings; and then they become weeds, difficult to
exterminate owing to their strong reproductive
power and to their rapid growth in height.
Their removal, before regeneration is carried
out on the neighbouring land, becomes a matter
of necessity; while, if seedlings should obtain
a foothold there, they must be cut out re-
peatedly if necessary, otherwise the new crop of
more valuable pine or larch will be interfered
with and damaged by the less profitable soft-
woods.

As the seeds are light and filamented, they
are easily borne by the winds into far-distant

THE SOFTWOODS 185

copses and highwoods, where they often find
growing-space in blank spots, and there seize hold
upon the ground. Certainly, such portions of
a crop are better than vacant patches producing
nothing; but, in general, any sort of prevalence
of sporadic birch and aspen in coppices, copses,
or highwoods is more frequently the mark of
slovenliness, neglect, ignorance, or apathy, than
of the most profitable methods or of business-
like management; though it is of course different
if merely a few finely-grown birch stems are
held over to form standards above a good thick
underwood in copse, where oak or ash of suit-
able size is wanting among the overwood. Aspen
is less suited than birch for occupying such a posi-
tion, as its bole often begins to become unsound
before attaining the age of forty years.

In certain cases, however, birch—and aspen
and other softwoods also, where the wood can
be sold to match or wood-pulp factories—may
be grown profitably on poor land of rather a
wet description, or on sandy soil where relief
is desired from the dreary monotony of woods
of Scots pine. If here planted in pure patches, it
quickly shoots up in growth; but it soon begins

186 OUR FORESTS: AND WOODLANDS

to become much broken in canopy, and then
the best thing is to thin out the plantation
and underplant the birch with some sort of
tree like spruce, or whatever promises to be a
remunerative crop on land of the given descrip-
tion, the standards being removed whenever the
best financial moment seems indicated by con-
sideration of the state of the underwood. In
general, birch will have reached its maturity
between the age of forty to sixty years.

The best development of birch and aspen is
attained when they are grown along with alder
or hornbeam in moist places, or with pine on
drier situations. Where they are found thriving
in pure woods, it may be safely asserted that
other crops of timber could be grown there with
greater profit to the owner. This remark cer-
tainly applies to parts of Scotland, as in Perth-
shire, where open woods of the birch are very
often to be found.

One drawback, not a very serious one, it is
true, but still a disadvantage, of having birch
and aspen growing along with, or even in the
vicinity of, Scots pine or larch, is that two forms
of fungous diseases not uncommon on these latter

THE SOFTWOODS 187

can only be reproduced by means of a change
of generation with somewhat similar diseases on
the leaves of the former. They thus form the
‘hosts’ upon whose leaves Melampsora betulina
on birch, and M. sremule on aspen, effect their
alternate generation with Coma Laricis on larch
needles, or C. pinetorquum on the Scots pine, which
sometimes causes canker of the young pine shoots.
This is an additional reason for cutting out young
softwoods in crops of larch and pine, and for
removing birch and aspen growing near areas
that are soon to be regenerated.

The Lime (Tilia europea) can hardly be called
one of our forest trees, as it is practically confined
to parks and to the more ornamental portions of
our woodlands. As an ornamental tree it is
well suited for the formation of avenues, and for
parks and open spaces. These are, indeed, the
proper positions for the lime. Grown in imme-
diate proximity to a house it is no favourite of
the gardener, who finds its beautiful foliage and
the sweetness of its honeyed flowers in July not
a full equivalent for the untidiness caused by the
falling of the stipules and bracts, and the early
shedding of the leaves. Producing wood lighter

188 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

than that of any of the other broad-leaved kinds of
trees, it would be well suited for making packing-
cases, crates, and the like were any quantity of
it available; but the good land required for its
best growth can be more profitably utilised by
other woodland crops.

Horse-chestnut (4sculus Hippocastanum) is of
rapid growth, and is a fairly hardy tree. Its
wood is soft and not durable, though in some
parts of Britain it sells for as much as elm, and
more than beech or pine. It can be used for
flooring, waggon bottoms, and turnery. Its best
growth is attained ina sheltered position, as heavy
winds are apt to break its spreading branches.
But it, too, is rather a tree of the parks and avenues
than a true denizen of the woodlands; and as it
requires a good loamy soil for its best growth,
hardwoods will usually prove a more profitable
admixture among the timber crops.

The Willows (Sa/ix) and Poplars (Populus)
are, like alder and birch, very closely related to
each other. Indeed, they are all four close rela-
tives, and they also have many characteristics in
common, for they are all light-demanding soft-
woods, and they all do well on moist or wet land.

THE SOFTWOODS 189

For this reason they were all known anciently
as ‘aquatic species’ of trees. There are now many
kinds of willows and poplars grown in Britain,
though originally there appears to have been only
one indigenous kind of each, the Saugh, Sallow,
Sally or Goat Willow (S. caprea), and the aspen
(P. tremula). The willows and poplars are easily
distinguished during their leafless winter condi-
tion, from the fact that the buds of the former are
enclosed by what appears to be one bract, while
the poplar buds are enclosed within several bracts.
Of both of these genera of the Salicacee family
there are many species, and these branch off again
into numerous, one is almost tempted to say
innumerable, varieties. As regards willows, even
in Evelyn’s time there seems to have been rather
a confusion between Withies, Sallyes, Osiers, and
Willows. The first-named embraced the Crack
or Redwood Willow (8. fragilis) and the White or
Huntingdon Willow (5. a/ba), for he remarks that
‘The Withy is a reasonable large ¢ree, and fit to be
planted on high banks; because they extend their
roots deeper than either Sa/lyes or Willows. .

There are two principal sorts of these Withies,
the hoary, and the red Withy, which is the Greek ;

190 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

toughest, and fittest to ind while the twigs are
flexible and tender.’ The force of the word
‘Greek’ here seems obscure, though if it were crack
it would exactly correspond with our own term
now. These two, together with the Russell or
Bedford Willow (S. Russelliana), said to have origi-
nated from a cross between the two species, are
the only tree-willows really deserving of cultiva-
tion, while the osiers or basket-willows may more
conveniently be referred to when dealing with
coppice woods. Our indigenous Saugh or Sallow
(S. caprwa), whose ‘palms’ render it a beautiful
object in the early spring, is common through low-
lying moist tracts in woodlands and along the
margin of brooks, where its broad, oval leaves,
generally twisted at their points, easily distinguish
it from the other willows. Here it grows into a
small tree, though along hillside streams it is more
frequently a mere shrub. And in any case, it is
not of much consequence to the forester. Where
it occurs among coppice under standards, and in
Britain it is frequently to be found there in
moist patches, it should be removed in favour
of some more remunerative kind of tree.
Then, as for the other branch of the family,

THE SOFTWOODS IgI

there are Black Poplars, Aspens, and Balsam
Poplars; but the only kinds that in addition to
the aspen, Common or Trembling Poplar, already
treated of, can be considered as true trees of our
woodlands are the Common Black Poplar (P.
nigra) and the Canadian Poplar (P. Canadensis),
belonging to the first group, and the Abele or
White Poplar (P. a/ba) among the aspens.

On the whole the willows deserve more atten-
tion than the poplars, even though some of the
latter are quicker in growth, because willow-
timber is the superior in quality. Taken as a
class the tree-willows show a decided tendency to
run into branches, although, curiously enough, it
is just the opposite quality which make osiers of
special value. Light and rather tough willow
wood is suitable not only for packing-cases and
framework for veneering, but also for match-
wood, and for wood-pulp on the Continent, wher-
ever large supplies are available. The crack
willow yields the best wood of all, suitable
for flooring planks, railway trucks, and similar
purposes.

The willows require a good, deep, and rather
moist soil in order to prove a commercial success

192 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

from the forester’s point of view. But they
have the great advantage of finding congenial
soil and situation along the sides of ponds or
fringing streams and waterways, in places which
are somewhat too moist for hardwoods. The crack
and Bedford willows are rather apt to be broken
by high winds, and all of them thrive best in
sheltered positions, while the first-named often
becomes ‘stag-headed’ and dry in the crown when
grown in an uncongenial situation. With these
exceptions the willows grow rapidly, soon attain-
ing large dimensions, on most soils that are not
too light and dry, though they of course thrive
best and develop most energetically on deep,
loamy, or sandy marshlands and riverine stretches.
Here they form beautiful objects in the landscape,
whether pollarded—especially the white willow,
which pollards best—or allowed to grow up to
their full maturity as trees. But there are many
marshy places, overgrown with sedge and tus-
socks of coarse rank grass, offering but a poor
pasturage at best, which might be profitably
planted up. For such places, unless they can be
drained to form better pasture or bear more pro-
fitable crops of timber, Evelyn’s shrewd, common-

THE SOFTWOODS 193

sense advice still to a great extent holds good,
that ‘Sallyes grow much faster, if they are
planted within reach of water, or in a very moorish
ground, or flat plain; and where the soil is, by
reason of extraordinary moisture, unfit for Arable,
or Meadow; for in these cases it is an extra-
ordinary improvement. In a word, where Birch,
and Alder will thrive.’

No forest trees are easier of propagation than
willows. Layering is very simple when seedlings
are already on the ground, while slips or cuttings,
called * ¢runchions’ in olden days, take root easily.
Such sets put out in spring are best made of
the last year’s wood, as they strike readily and
grow rapidly, the object in view being thus
attained more speedily than by means of seed.
Hence sowing of tree-willows is not the usual
method of forming or reproducing plantations.
Root-suckers, like those so characteristic of
aspens, are not thrown up by willows, though many
of their stool-shoots look very much like true
stoles. All three chief kinds of the tree-willows
attain a very large size, ranging up to seventy
feet in height, and with a girth of about three feet

in diameter. Indeed, the Bedford often exceeds
N

194 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

these dimensions, both as to height and girth.
If the production of timber is the main object,
and not beautification of the landscape, the trees
should be planted in a mass, and kept close
together to draw them up as straight poles.
When once their main height has been attained
they can be thinned out freely at frequent in-
tervals, so that their strong natural demand ‘for
light and large growing-space may be duly met.
This checking of premature branch formation is
more particularly necessary in the case of the
white willow, which will otherwise soon spread
itself out laterally. The wood of willows being
soft and porous, the pruning of large branches
is always attended with more than ordinary risk
of fungous disease in the shape of rot occa-
sioned by kinds of Polyporus; and this remark
also applies to the poplars.

The wood of the poplars is put to very much
the same uses as that of willows, only it is not so
tough, and is therefore not endowed with such
good technical qualities as the latter. To make
up for this, however, the poplars are even more
rapid in growth. They yield good marketable
timber at about forty to fifty years of age. The

THE SOFTWOODS 195

largest of them all, the Canadian poplar, often
reaches a height of 100 to 130 feet, with a stem
varying from 3 to 5 feet in diameter. The latter
and the common black poplar are easily distin-
guishable from the white, waving, downy leaves,
the silvery branches, and the smooth, light bark
of the abele and the common aspen; while the
black poplars, so called from their darker bark,
which soon fissures longitudinally, are also easily
distinguishable individually. The common black
poplar has a thinner and more open crown of
foliage, borne by branches forming rather a wide
angle with the stem; while the Canadian poplar
is more thickly and heavily foliaged, the branches
run upwards from the stem at a more acute angle,
and their twigs curve in somewhat towards the
stem. These distinctions as regards branch for-
mation can of course be noticed most clearly
during the leafless period of winter rest, but even
during the spring and summer months the thicker
foliage, the larger leaves, and their darker green
colour serve to characterise the Canadian as
differing from the common black poplar.

A good, deep, moist loamy soil and a sheltered
situation are the conditions best suited for the

196 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

cultivation of poplars, but none of the good
kind will thrive to the best profit on dry,
high-lying land. Given those favourable condi-
tions, the Canadian poplar is the species whose
cultivation is most likely to yield good and profit-
able returns. It is hardy, and shows itself more
accommodating with regard to soil than either of
the other two kinds; while it is extremely rapid
in growth, produces wood of better quality than
the common black poplar or the abele, arid can,
though essentially a light-demanding tree, be
grown somewhat closer together than either of
these. These advantages can perhaps best be
estimated when it is recollected that even the
common black poplar often yields an average of
two feet per tree per annum at thirty years of age
when grown in a free position. Though this
growth would, of course, be less in highwoods,
yet the quality of the cleaner timber would be
better for all kinds of technical purposes. The
white poplar is somewhat more exacting than
either of the black poplars as to the kind of soil
upon which it grows. It thrives best on loamy
or sandy land; on anything like stiff clay soils it
is apt to become dry in the top. Though it

THE SOFTWOODS 197

also yields good timber at forty or fifty years of
age, it is not so rapid in growth as the black
poplars. Hence it is less suited than these for
growth in highwoods; but, on the other hand, it
is the best of all the poplars for coppice woods
on suitable low-lying tracts, where it quickly pro-
duces a remunerative crop. AAs it is less affected
than the black poplars by the smoke of towns,
this form of crop may prove highly profitable
wherever there is any demand for match-wood.
Like the common aspen, the abele throws up
plentiful suckers, which indeed often render it
a great nuisance in pasturage and meadow land;
but slips or cuttings do not strike so readily as
in the case of the black poplars. The latter are
easily propagated by sets of the young wood put
out in spring, which do best if they are placed
for a year in the nursery. Such yearling cuttings
of the Canadian poplar often grow to a height of
four feet in the nursery, which shows its power
of establishing itself and its early rapidity of
growth. If rank growth of weeds were not to
be feared, the cuttings could of course be best
and most cheaply put in position at once in
spring when cut from the parent tree. In this

198 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

matter we have not much to learn beyond what
our ancestors knew. ‘In moist and doggy places,’
said shrewd John Evelyn, ‘they will flourish
wonderfully, so the ground be not spewing ; but
especially near the Margins and banks of Rivers.’
And in adding precepts on their cultivation he
advised how ‘srunchions of seven, or eight feet long,
thrust two foot into the earth, when once roofed,
may be cut at six inches above ground; and thus
placed at a yard distant they will immediately fur-
nish a kind of Copse. But in case you plant them
of rooted-trees, or smaller sets, fix them not too
deep; for though we bury the Trunchions thus
profound, yet is the root which they strike com-
monly but shallow.’

It is strange how the necessity for close plant-
ing, above clearly advocated, even for light-
demanding trees, such as the ‘poplar and abele
(which are all of them Aospitable trees, for
anything thrives under their shades), should have
been so completely lost sight of in British
Forestry since the time of the Restoration. Prob-
ably very few of the plantations of any sort
made during the last century have shown so many
as the 4840 plants per acre recommended even

THE SOFTWOODS 199

for quick-growing poplars by Evelyn. And this
is just one of the principal causes, along with
injudicious and premature thinning, why all our
woodland crops—hardwood, softwood, and coni-
ferous—have neither been so remunerative in the
past as they ought to have been, nor are so well
qualified to yield a class of wood best supplying
the requirements of the market in the present, as
they should now be doing. But this fact must
receive general recognition before it can be hoped
that steps will be taken to remedy the defects
arising therefrom, and to make Forestry more
remunerative and better able to supply the wants
of the British timber market in the future.

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A Among the Pines
A ON & Firs, & in
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the Larch Plantations

AT one time, no doubt, a very considerable
portion of the British Isles was covered by wood-
lands of Scots pine, our only indigenous conifer,
formerly called the fir. The extent of these prim-
eval woods and the method of their destruction,
having already been referred to in the first two
chapters, need not again be touched on. But
in Holinshed’s time there were still large tracts
under pine, which have now mostly been cleared
away. ‘The firre, frankincense, and pine, we
do not altogether want, especiallie the firre,

whereof we have some store in Chatleie moore in

200

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 201

Darbishire, Shropshire, Andernesse, and a mosse
neere Manchester, not far from Leicesters house :
although that in time past not only all Lancaster-
shire, but a great part of the coast betweene
Chester and the Solwe were well stored.’ At a
later date much attention was given to the culti-
vation of Scots pine in many parts of England,
both for its bold beauty as a woodland tree and
for its value as a timber producer. In the New
Forest, where pine is not indigenous, it was first
introduced by the plantation of Ocknell Clump
in 1776. After this it was largely planted on
the poor sandy soils throughout several of the
southern counties. But such plantations were
sometimes loudly condemned. ‘As to the first
of these, the Scotch Fir,’ Cobbett’s opinion was
that ‘everybody in England knows too much
about it, seeing that it now covers hundreds of
thousands of acres that might have been covered
by some valuable Pine, or by some other tree.’
Without considering this opinion critically,
it may be safely asserted that at the present
moment conifers, and the Scots pine by no means
least of these, are almost as well deserving of
attention as any other kinds of trees we have.

202 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

First of all, of the enormous quantities of timber
now being annually imported into Britain for
constructive purposes more than nine-tenths are
coniferous, nor are the demands likely to change
in this respect, and the whole of these imports
could be easily and profitably grown as crops of
timber on poor land now lying disused or heather-
grown, and all but unproductive save for shooting
purposes. Secondly, in comparison with broad-
leaved trees, the conifers make but small demand
on fertility of the soil, while even among conifers
the pines, and particularly Scots and Corsican
pines, form fairly good woodland crops, where it
would be hard to form plantations of other, more
exacting kinds of trees. Hence a conifer crop of
some sort, and sometimes, as on poor dry soils,
specifically a crop of pine, is the only practical
stepping-stone by which denuded and deteriorated
hillsides or moors can be improved, by fall of
the needles, so as later on to become suitable, if
desired, for bearing a more exacting crop of
broad-leaved trees when the conifers become
mature and are marketable to the best advantage.
And, finally, on the poorer classes of soil coni-
ferous crops of timber, judiciously formed and

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 203

properly managed, are a decidedly remunerative
way of utilising the land, as they often yield
extremely good returns on the capital invested in
them. Indeed, wherever purely actuarial consid-
erations may govern Forestry, the greatest profit
for land below the average in quality, and not in-
frequently also for some of the average classes
of woodland soil, will usually be in coniferous
crops treated with a rotation of about seventy or
eighty years. And this will be all the more
apparent if plantations of timber have first to be
formed on vacant land in place of being merely
regenerated from crops already growing on the
ground.

There are, of course, drawbacks even to the culti-
vation of conifers, because they are more exposed
to many serious kinds of damage than crops of
broad-leaved trees. Grown in dense masses, pines
and firs are liable to breakage by heavy snow, and
to be thrown ex masse by strong gales, as in 1893
—damages from which the deciduous larch suffers
least of all the conifers. Then they have each their
own particular scourges in the shape of noxious
beetles and moths, and of fungous diseases, which
effect a foothold wherever the crops are either

204 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

flagging in vegetative energy through unsuitable
environment as to soil or situation, or have been
subjected to injuries of any sort, as during hail-
storms or the like. These dangers can to a
great extent be lessened by the judicious formation
of mixed crops, yet they always exist in a greater
or less degree. They must just be looked on
as the unavoidable risks inherent to investments
offering a good return from a poor class of land.
In addition to judicious mixture of trees in
forming woodland crops, the very best means of
immunity from insects lies in the protection of
insectivorous wild birds, as advocated by the
Marquess of Granby on pages viii to x of the
‘General Preface’ to this Series, at the beginning
of Sir Edward Grey’s volume on Fly-Fishing.
The forester’s best friend in this respect is the
starling, and everything possible should be done,
by hanging up nesting-boxes and giving protection
in other ways, to encourage this the most service-
able of birds to the farmer, the market gardener,
and the forester. The cuckoo is another ex-
tremely useful bird, while rooks, kestrels, buz-
zards, jays, and magpies do more good than
harm. Even polecats, stoats, weasels, and foxes

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 205

have more virtues than vices so far as the woods
are concerned; but here the gamekeeper and the
sportsman unite to talk down the forester, and he
must prudently retire before so strong a com-
bination against him.

The Yew—anciently spelled Yghk (as in Holin-
shed), and perhaps the only English word that
could ever be written without a vowel, for v and u
were then interchangeable—it is no longer neces-
sary to grow in woods, because, as Evelyn puts it,
‘Since the use of Bows is laid aside amongst us, the
propagation of the Eugh-tree is likewise quite
forborn.’ It is now mostly relegated to orna-
mental groves, where many historical trees of
great antiquity are to be found, and to church-
yards, for which its sombre aspect and vast
longevity specially befit it. In gardens it forms,
closely clipped, one of the most beautiful of
hedges, though in parks the toxic effects of the
leaves on horses and cattle render it most danger-
ous either as an ornamental tree or in a hedge.
Its fine dark wood used to be made into tankards,
yet even these were said to have had deleterious
effects, although Evelyn, who will have none of
this decrying of a tree which was once as valuable

206 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

to English bowmen as oak afterwards was to our
seamen, explains that ‘The “oxic quality was cer-
tainly in the /iqguor which these good Fellows
tippl’d out of those Jotiles, not in the nature of
the wood.’ But as there is no poison without its
antidote, a brazen wedge driven into the body of
the tankard counteracted this ‘veninous quality’
of yew wood.

The Conifere of importance to the forester in
Britain are those comprised within the family of
the bietinee, and of these mainly the genera
of Pines (Pinus), Spruces (Picea), Larches
(Larix), and Douglas Fir (Pseudorsuga). The
Silver Firs (dies) are of more value than Hem-
locks (Tsuga) and Cedars (Cedrus), but of these
only the common Silver Fir (4. pectinata), the
chief tree of the Black Forest and the Jura
Mountains, could well be grown in Britain, and
that only in the warmer portions of central and
southern England. And, of course, if placed in
unsuitable climatic environment, it has a weakly
growth ; it soon becomes liable to attacks of Aphis
and to fungous diseases. This has been abundantly
shown in the cool climate of the north of Scotland,
and it is precisely what one would have expected

Douctas Fir

To face page 207

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS = 207

with regard to the cultivation of silver fir under
climatic conditions differing so essentially from
those of the localities to which it is indigenous.
Except when grown under very favourable condi-
tions, its timber, known as ‘ White Pine’ from
the paucity of resin ducts, ranks rather below
that of spruce in general quality, and both of
these are inferior to the heartwood of larch and
Scots pine. The wood of the Douglas Fir or
Red Pine of Oregon (P. Douglasii) produced in
Scotland is now known to rank in quality between
that of Scots pine and larch, and as its production
of wood exceeds in annual average that of any
other conifer grown in Britain, this very valuable
tree seems to deserve special consideration and
experimental cultivation in woods worked for
profit.

The rate of growth of Douglas fir is indeed
remarkable. In 1887 evidence was given before
the Parliamentary Committee on Forestry that
on the Scone estate, in Perthshire, a plantation of
eight acres in extent, made in 1860, gave a thin-
ning of 620 poles of large size in the spring of
1887. This plantation, as the Earl of Mansfield
has kindly informed me, now consists of 1535

208 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

dominant trees, and 95 dominated stems that will
have to be removed during the next few years.
The average height of the dominant trees is 75
feet, and the largest of these girths seven feet at
five feet above the ground, though, of course,
there is considerable diversity in the size of the
trees. As the crop now stands on the ground
the dominant trees are estimated to contain 25
cubic feet each, or 38,375 cubic feet worth gd..
a foot (41439, 1s. 3d.), and the dominated trees
44 cubic feet each, or 4274 cubic feet worth 8d.
a foot (£414, §s.), i.e. £1553, 6s. 3d. or £194
an acre for the total crop. The thinnings of 1887
sold for £34, and the only expenditure since
then has been £17 for pruning which might
have been unnecessary but for the fact that the
plantation was originally made at the wide dis-
tance of 6 feet by 6 feet. Fast as the growth of
larch often is, it never attains so large an average
annual increase as this represents.

The four genera of abietinous conifers which
seem most likely to form profitable woodland
crops in Britain, differ greatly among themselves
as regards their natural requirements and their
specific habits of growth. Larch (L. europea),

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS = 209

in particular, and also Scots pine (P. sylvestris)
are distinctly light-demanding trees, while the
two black pines, the Austrian (P. Austriaca) and
the Corsican (P. Laricio), are less exacting in this
respect. The Douglas fir and the Norway spruce,
on the other hand, are capable of bearing a fair
amount of shade, and are therefore suitable for
being utilised for underplanting on soil favour-
able to their growth. In some cases Corsican
pine seems also suitable for similar use in the
case of open woods of larch or Scots pine where
the amount of overshadowing is not oppressive,
and particularly on good sandy soils, or near the
sea-coast.

The pines are characterised as a genus by their
ability to thrive on poor land, so long as it is
deep and loose enough to let their strong tap-
roots sink well into the soil. The necessity for
free development of their deep root-system is
characteristic of all three of the pines likely to be
grown for profit in Britain—Scots, Austrian, and
Corsican. Scots pine is the least exacting of all
as to soil and climate. Though its finest develop-
ment is perhaps attained on gravelly loams with a

good permeable subsoil, it grows well upon deep,
o

210 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

loose, sandy soil which once formed the bed of
the ocean. Corsican pine also thrives well on
much the same classes of land, and can very ad-
vantageously be grown, either by itself or along
with Scots, in central and southern England,
though it is less likely to thrive so vigorously in
the colder climate of the north of Scotland. In
warm localities it outgrows our indigenous pine
both in height and girth; and as its timber is at
least as good as Scots, this greater yield entitles
it to receive favourable consideration in woods
grown for profit. In mixed plantations on loamy
and clayey soils in the Severn Valley it far out-
strips Scots and is even outgrowing the larch
planted along with it. On the Earl of Selborne’s
estate of Blackmoor, in Hants, a few Corsican
mixed with Scots in the Wolmer plantation,
formed on deep sandy soil belonging to the
lower greensand formation, show considerable
superiority in rate of growth. This crop con-
sists mostly of Scots pine at north end planted,
in 1869, somewhat irregularly in lines at 4 to 6
feet apart. It is now just forming normal canopy,
but a tangle of bracken covers most of the
ground. The growth in height is from about 30

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 211

to 45 feet, and the stems girth up to 27 inches
in maximo. Some Corsican pine among the Scots
are quite outgrowing the latter: two at the edge
of a green ride are about 50 feet high, and girth 29
and 33 inches respectively. They tend to run to
a broad, branching crown unless in close canopy.

In addition to rapidity of growth, Corsican has
the two great advantages of being able to bear
rather a greater degree of shade than Scots pine,
which is impatient of overshadowing either from
above or laterally, and of being, probably from
its great resinousness, less attacked by rabbits
than any other good kind of tree crop. It
therefore deserves a trial for the underplanting
of larch and Scots pine woods when once these
have finished their growth in height and are
being thinned freely to let the stems thicken
rapidly for’ the market; while its comparative
immunity from damage by ground game would
make successful underplanting and formation
of new woods, especially by means of sowing
after adequate preparation of the soil, very
much cheaper than if regular planting has to
be resorted to.

The Austrian pine has somewhat similar char-

212 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

acteristics to the Corsican, but the growth of the
latter in England appears often to be the more
vigorous; and as its wood is of rather better
quality, Corsican seems to deserve the preference.
On poor limy soils, however, Austrian may be
of special service in re-stocking land which has
been allowed to become exhausted and deterio-
rated through past mismanagement. In this
respect it can sometimes be made to do good
service in re-stocking hot southern or western
slopes where thin woods of beech cannot be
regenerated naturally—a task which has often
to be faced in the beech tracts of southern
England. Unless such land is not too stony for
the plough, it can perhaps best be re-stocked by
ploughing and broadcast sowing of beech mast,
Austrian pine seed, and lucerne; otherwise the
preparation should be in parallel strips running
horizontally along the slope. The lucerne should
not be harvested, but allowed to die and form
manure for the beech and pine, which are to
form the wood. The subsequent treatment of
such a crop will of course depend on circum-
stances, but the first object is to get a stock of
tree growth of any sort on the ground.

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 213

Larch, pine, and Douglas fir are the hardwoods
among the conifers, their heartwood differing
more distinctly in colour from the sapwood than
is the case in spruces or silver firs. The Scots
pine timber imported from the Baltic and Scandi-
navia is classed as ‘red pine,’ while spruce wood is
known as ‘Baltic deals,’ and silver fir as ‘ white
pine.” Though not ranking equal with larch
wood, pine timber is much better paid than
spruce or silver fir, and meets with a readier
market, even though the wood is more apt to
shrink.

Notwithstanding their somewhat greater capa-
city for bearing shade, the black pines may con-
veniently be classed along with Scots pine in
treating of this as a woodland crop. Essentially a
light-demanding tree, pine soon runs into branches
unless sown or closely planted. If put out at
more than 3 feet by 3 feet this natural tendency
very soon shows itself. Later on, it is true,
when close canopy is formed in the course of
a few years, the branches are killed off unless the
cover is opened up by injudicious thinning. Even
when isolated, it shows a remarkable capacity for
casting off its branches and exhibiting a clean

214. OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

bole picturesquely topped with a sparse crown
of tufted foliage.

Pure woods of pine are usually found only on
the poorer classes of dry soil, where pine is often
the last resource of the forester; and in such
unfavourable situations its growth is naturally
not so vigorous or profitable as under more con-
genial circumstances. Here it may have to be
harvested at about seventy or eighty years of age
with a poor yield of about 3000 cubic feet per
acre, while the better classes of pine soil will
show considerably more than twice that stock,
and at the same time make it profitable to delay
the fall for other twenty to forty years.

On land above the average in quality pine
thrives well in admixture with other kinds of
trees, needle-bearing or broad-leaved, so long as
these are of somewhat slower growth, permitting
it to have its crown free from overshadowing.
Here it grows more vigorously, forms a better
bole, and has a larger proportion of good red
heartwood than if grown in pure crops, while it is
less liable to be broken by snow or to suffer from
attacks of noxious insects and fungous diseases.
But on inferior classes of land it is often simply

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AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 215

a case of ‘Hobson’s choice,’ and the pine must
go where a crop of other trees can either not be
produced, or are not likely to prove remunerative.
Such land can often best be utilised by planting
pines, to be kept in close canopy till the growth
in height culminates and the natural demand for a
larger growing-space seems to make itself impe-
ratively felt. Then, usually between the thirtieth
and the forty-fifth year, they can be thinned
freely, yielding a good return in this way, and
underplanted with whatever shade-bearing kind
of tree seems to hold out the greatest promise
of being profitable. This should not be difficult,
because, under the close canopy of pine, the heavy
fall of needles improves the land so much that
its general quality and its productive capacity
soon become far higher than they were at the
time of planting. Thus close canopy is not only
profitable for the growing crop, but it increases,
de facto, the capital value of the ground planted.
If, on the other hand, the natural manure with
which the soil is thus enriched year after year
by the dead needles be allowed to become dissi-
pated through neglect of close cover, or of under-
planting when the canopy becomes broken by

216 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

advancing age and stronger demand for growing-
space, the capital value thus increased artificially
is gradually allowed to decrease again without
yielding any permanent advantage to the land-
owner. ‘This seems quite self-evident, when one
comes to think the matter out. The only possible
explanation of the British method of ‘ Arbori-
culture’ must therefore be found in the fact that
the vast majority of our woodlands are game
coverts and pleasure woods, and that their owners
do not care to treat them merely, or mainly, on a
commercial footing as crops of timber. Surely,
however, if waste lands can be shown to be
thus profitably productive of timber, our national
‘shop-keeping” instincts, with which we have
ever been credited by more economical Conti-
nental: countries, might also have full play even
without interfering at all with the existing game
preserves and ornamental woods in all parts of
these Islands.

On the better classes of pine soil natural re-
generation can easily be effected. But this method
is on the whole unusual for pure crops of pine,
as the damage done to the young seedlings by
overshadowing is not compensated by the in-

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 217

creased growth on the standard trees. Hence
artificial regeneration is the rule in most localities
where there is a good demand for timber. Even
without parent standard trees, a self-sown crop
of seedlings soon springs up on blank spaces in
immediate proximity to seed-bearing trees; but
this can seldom indeed be relied on to form any-
thing like a satisfactory, even-aged crop.

Planting has also at the same time special
dangers to face. When pine woods have been
felled, replanting cannot safely take place till
four years after the clearing, unless the stumps
and roots be stubbed up, as they form breeding-
places for the pine weevil (Hylobius abietis), a very
noxious beetle often committing great havoc
among young woods in Scotland by gnawing off
the bark during the months of May to August.
This beetle of course does most damage where
areas are cut in regular succession, when the fresh
stumps, the places for breeding and larval resi-
dence, are in the immediate vicinity of the feeding-
grounds, the young plantations, when the beetles
hatch out in spring. This danger is minimised
by allocating the annual falls so that the area
to be planted each year shall be surrounded by

218 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

falls which do not offer fresh stumps as brood-
places. Like other conifers, the pine stems must
be barked to obviate danger from bark-beetles,
otherwise soon increasing in myriads to become
extremely destructive in the woods, and the timber
should invariably be removed as soon as possible
after felling.

Perhaps the best distance for planting pine, and
other conifers also, lies between 3 feet by 3 feet
and 4 feet by 4 feet, plants of 2 to 24 feet in
height being used. While not unduly expensive,
this enables the crop to form canopy quickly,
and it can then yield good, early returns in
the way of thinning when there is a favourable
market. As among all other light-demanding
timber crops, thinning of pines should extend
to the removal of stems before they become so
much dominated as to fall into an unhealthy
condition, else they soon attract beetles.

Where the soil is light and sandy, sowing will
often prove the cheapest means of forming pine
woods for the first time, the land being ploughed
and sown broadcast, or else prepared in strips
and sown in rows. Where moor-pan forms an
impervious subsoil it must be broken through by

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 219

the steam-plough, because this, like hard, binding
soil of any description, prevents the formation of
the pine’s deep tap-root, affects its growth in
height and its general vigour, and predisposes it to
fungous disease. One of the most common forms
of the latter, which attacks young pine plantations
before they have succeeded in establishing them-
selves in the ground, is the ‘leaf shedding’ caused
by Hysterium pinastri. This has been uncommonly
prevalent in England during the last two or three
years of abnormal spring weather and summer
warmth. The weakly state predisposing to attacks
of this fungus is principally produced by drought,
though it can also arise from frost, as well as from
active transpiration through the needles on bright
sunny days in winter while the soil remains frost-
bound and unable to furnish the rootlets with
fresh supplies of water. But the reddening of
the needles and the death of the plants over
large areas often takes place from drought or
frost alone, without the fungus. Before forming
crops of pine, heather or similar soil covering
should be cut and burned for the advantage of
the young plants.

Of spruces, the only two of any importance to

220 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

the British forester at present are the Common or
Norway Spruce (P. excelsa) and the Menzies or
Sitka Spruce (P. Sitkaensis). The former is by far
the better known and the more largely cultivated ;
but the latter, a tree of giant dimensions like our
other Californian immigrant, the Douglas fir, is a
species deserving of equal consideration as a profit-
able crop. Its timber is hard, firm, and durable,
ranking between spruce and Douglas fir in general
quality. Indeed, on mild, fresh, loamy, or sandy
soils a crop formed mainly of Douglas fir and
Menzies spruce, with larch sprinkled here and there
having some advance in growth, might perhaps
prove one of the most profitable woodland crops
that can be grown in Britain. The larch would
probably have to be cut out at an early age, as
unable to hold its own against the two quicker-
growing trees, though not before it might be of
marketable size; and this method would diminish
the existing risk of the poles being spoiled by
canker. The full advantages of trees like Douglas
fir or Menzies spruce, or any other conifer for
that matter, can only be obtained, however, where
there is likely to be a regular supply of their
timber, because mere small lots offered from time

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 221

to time receive far less attention than if the out-
turn were continuous.

The common or Norway spruce, one of the
most profitable crops grown in mountainous tracts
in central Germany north of the warmer region
of the silver fir, does not thrive well in the mild
climate of central and southern England. Here its
general vigour is less than in its true home; and
this immediately, and very noticeably, affects what
is in a colder and more congenial climate one of
its great characteristics as a timber crop, its
capacity for bearing shade and protecting the soil
either when forming pure woods or when growing
along with larch and pine to counteract the evil
effects of their light crown of foliage and their
inability to safeguard the soil against deterioration.
This comparatively weakly state of growth and
want of thickness and persistency in foliage, to-
gether with the fact that its wood fetches only
about the half of what well-grown Scots pine can
be sold for, makes Norway spruce a tree of little
use in southern English woodlands. Its develop-
ment and the quality of its wood are better if it
be grown along with beech; but in England, oak,
ash, sycamore, and any other hardwood would of

222 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

course always deserve the preference in this re-
spect, as being by far the more profitable kinds of
trees to be grown in association with beech. In
the cooler climate of the Scottish Highlands the
growth of spruce is better than in the warm tracts
of southern England; but there again the profit
it seems to promise by no means entitles it to
much consideration per se. Despite the fact that
close crops of spruce yield, from about 60 to 120
years of age, fully fifteen per cent. more wood than
the Scots pine, yet the additional fact that in the
north of Scotland, on the Novar estate in Ross-
shire, for example, spruce only fetches 3d. a
cubic foot against 3d. to 6d. for Scots pine, and
1s. to 1s. 2d. for larch, robs its cultivation of
an attraction it would certainly offer if Scottish
‘Baltic deals’ commanded a better market price.’

1 To be of any practical use these details must extend so as to
show the prices ruling locally for other kinds of timber. These
are: oak and ash, Is. to 1s. 6d.; sycamore, Is. to 5s.; elm and
horse-chestnut, Is. ; beech, 6d. to 1s.; lime, 4d.: for timber
growing in fairly accessible places. Local labour is paid at 17s.
to 18s. a week for planting, and 18s. to 20s. for timber work,
suitable bothies being provided to obviate loss of time in going
to and from work. There is probably no other commodity,
except perhaps building stone, subject to such differences in
local value as timber, owing to its weight and bulk. Hence the
necessity for, and the profit of, improving communications in
thickly-wooded districts.

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 223

Hence even in the north of Scotland, with its
more congenial climate, the cultivation of the
Norway spruce seems only to be profitable when
it is used as an auxiliary for the improved growth
of larch and pine, or for underplanting maturing
crops of these.

Its spreading superficial root-system specially
fits it to be the tree of the mountains, with their
shallow soil and rocky outcrops. So long as it
grows in large compact masses, either by itself
or along with other trees, the tangled network
of roots enables it to offer considerable resist-
ance to storms; but once the canopy is broken
into freely, or the flank of the high forest is ex-
posed to heavy wind, especially when the tree-tops
are wet and heavy while the ground is sodden
with rain, whole crops can easily be brought to
the ground as windfall during heavy gales.

Like pine and larch, spruce has its own dire
enemies in the shape of injurious insects and
deadly fungous diseases, evils from which it is
best protected by means of admixture with these
or other trees. Where soil and climate favour its
growth—a fresh or moist sandy loam, a cool situa-
tion, and rather a humid atmosphere—Norway

224 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

spruce retains its foliage for about five to seven
years, so that, though the needles are small and
short, they form a dense canopy overhead.
Unlike the Douglas fir and Menzies spruce,
the common spruce is less rapid in early growth
than larch or pine, and this, coupled with the
power of bearing shade, makes it, under favour-
able conditions, suitable for forming mixed woods
in order to improve the growth of these more
valuable trees, and to preserve the productive
capacity of the soil. As in certain cases, how-
ever, somewhat similar advantages may perhaps
—though experiment can alone safely determine
this—be attainable with more profitable results
by means of Corsican pine, Douglas fir, and
Menzies spruce, the common spruce seems never
likely to rank as one of the more remunerative
kinds of timber crops in the British woodlands ;
and apart from this the tree has no special
interest, as spruce woods are among the darkest,
the most sombre and the most depressing of
woodlands, though the tree itself, when grown
isolated, forms a remarkably beautiful addition
to the pinetum or the park. One great purpose,
however, the spruce can serve—and in this respect

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 225

it should be much more largely used than at pre-
sent—it forms one of the very best shelter-belts
or wind-mantles along the unprotected edges of
woods and plantations exposed to the exhaust-
ing effects of winds. Along all such a couple
of rows of spruce should be planted, and never
trimmed or lopped.

Larch is one of the most interesting as well as
one of the most profitable of our naturalised
trees. It was introduced into England in 1629,
when it seems to have received no particular
attention; but after its introduction into Scot-
land, either in 1725 or 1727, it was largely planted
in many parts of the Island, though more espe-
cially in the Scottish highlands. The story is
well known of how two seedling larches were
received by the Duke of Athole at Dunkeld,
together with some young orange trees and other
exotics from Italy. Placed along with these in
the hothouse, the young larch drooped and seemed
to die, when they were thrown out on the rubbish
heap. Recovering in the colder air they were
planted in the lawn, where they still flourish. In
Evelyn’s day practically nothing was known about

this tree, though of course he has a good word
P

226 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

to say about ‘the Larch, from whence that useful
drogue Agaric is gather’d. I reade of Beams of
no less than 120 foot in length made out of this
goodly Tree, which is of so strange a composi-
tion that ’twill hardly ’burn, as Cesar found in a
Castle he besieg’d built of it; yet the Coa/s thereof
were held far better then any other for the melt-
ing of Iron. That which now grows some where
about Chelnsford in Essex, arriv’d to a flourishing,
and ample Zree, does sufficiently reproach our
negligence and want of industry.’

Under the encouragement of successive Dukes
of Athole many millions of larches were planted
on their Perthshire estates, and larch-planting
became general throughout many parts of Britain
during the present century. It was found to
improve pasture in a remarkable degree, thus
adding largely to the value of pasturage in moun-
tain tracts, apart from the advantage accruing
from the profit of its excellent, durable wood.

Unfortunately, however, it was often planted
on soils and situations unsuitable to its true re-
quirements, and unfavourable for sound, vigorous
growth. Indigenous to an alpine climate that
jumps almost straight from winter into early

3 ~.
Se

aces

i pee

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 227

summer, and back again from late summer into
the winter state of rest, it had to encounter the
different conditions of a well-marked spring and
autumn. But these conditions were, unfortunately,
just those which favoured the growth and spread
of a very destructive form of cankerous disease
of the stem peculiar to the larch, due to a beauti-
ful grey and orange fungus, Peziza Willkommit.
This parasite occurs in the Alps also, it is true;
but the sudden change from winter to summer
and then back again to winter, combined with the
greater dryness of the climate, prevents the Peziza
from there ripening and scattering its myriad
spores, while at the same time better enabling
the larch to withstand attacks. The milder and
more humid climate of Britain, the formation of
large pure plantations, and no doubt also a con-
stitutional vegetative power perhaps below par
as compared with the natural vigour developed
in its alpine home, in consequence of being
planted on soils and in situations not really suit-
able for it, have enabled this disease to obtain a
very firm footing in Britain, and to become an
epidemic scourge to the larch-grower. Many
plantations become so badly affected with canker

228 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

as to be quite spoiled for the production of
valuable timber; and there can be no hope of
stamping out the disease. The best thing that
can be done is to exercise care in the selection
of localities for growing it, in which respect a
northern aspect most resembles the alpine climate ;
to grow it only on suitable soils, such as good,
deep, fresh limes or loams and the better classes
of sands; and to raise it in mixed crops rather
than in pure plantations. Neither tenacious clays,
nor binding limes, nor poor soils, nor land that
can be classed between moist and wet, are favour-
able to its good growth and healthy development.
Under any adverse circumstances, but especially
when growing on uncongenial soil or on a hot
exposure without depth enough to accommodate
its deep tap-root properly, its natural vigour is
diminished. It is then most apt to be attacked by
the larch aphis (Chermes Jaricis) and the mining
moth (Coleophora laricella), the injuries made by
which form wound-spots soon infected by the
canker-producing Peziza fungus.

Larch develops a very strong tap-root, hence
depth of soil is essential for its best growth. It
is the most light-demanding of all our forest

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 229

trees, hence the free enjoyment of light and air
are essential requisites for its continuous thriving
even when its main growth in height has been
completed. Although pure plantations appear
to thrive well, growing larch in this manner is
not the way of producing the largest and the
most valuable stems, while it certainly very much
increases the danger from insects and canker.
The best dimensions of larch and the finest
quality of timber are produced in admixture with
beech on limy soils. This, or planting here and
there as a standard in copsewoods, or growing
along with pines and spruces on the better classes
of land placed under conifer crops, must be treat-
ment better suited to the larch than growth in
pure woods. Certainly a safe and fairly remun-
erative crop of this sort would be a mixture of
larch (23 to 3 feet high) and Corsican pine (about
2 feet high) at 3 feet apart—or 34 to 4 feet—
care being thus taken to secure some solid advan-
tage for the more rapid growth of the larch in
height, to avoid its being dominated by the pine.
Grown along with oak and ash as standards
over coppice larch should yield a very profitable
return, while a little expenditure in pruning off

230 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

any unnecessary branches below 23 inches in dia-
meter, and tarring the wound-surfaces, would be
well spent in the improvement of the bole.
Where grown in pure plantations, larch woods
soon thin themselves and require underplanting.
A pure larch wood of about thirty to forty years
of age has only about half the density of a good
crop of Scots pine, and even the latter cannot
protect the soil for itself. Between the twentieth
and thirtieth year the necessity for a free grow-
ing-space makes itself unmistakably noticeable
in larch plantations; and after that underplanting
is essential, unless the soil is to be allowed to
deteriorate and suffer gradual loss in capital value.
There is of course always a great inducement
to plant pure plantations of larch, as they soon
yield thinnings of marketable value even in spite
of the canker. And when the demand for such
small poles is*good, as in hop-growing districts,
pure crops can prove highly remunerative. The
following example, furnished by an estate-agent on
the Chiltern Hills, may show how profitable larch
can be, even when grown on poor land, in southern
England. ‘Larch plantations on the chalk sub-
soil, overlaid with a good cap of flinty clay,

EYOTA OLMIS.
Pa CRE:

we
mm,

OT Sit, jas;

To face page 231

AN ENGLISH LARCH PLANTATION

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 231

have done remarkably well, and are very -profit-
able to grow. As an instance, a portion of a
plantation was recently cut hand-smooth, and
consisted of about 220 matured trees per acre,
which realised as many pounds. The original
number was about 2700, and from the time that
the poles were large enough to use for cutting
through the centre for rails, &c., this plantation
has always yielded its annual quota to the estate
account. The age of the trees is known to be
about seventy years, one man having been found
who assisted in planting the original stock.’

This plantation was apparently formed at about
4 feet by 4 feet. Remunerative indeed as these
results are, it seems almost certain that, even
though the first outlay would have been greater
if the plants had been put at 3 feet by 3 feet,
or 4840 per acre, thinned sparingly from time
to time during their most vigorous period of
growth in height, and then more freely thinned
and underplanted when their long boles were fully
developed, the monetary returns would have been
even more satisfactory. The returns from thin-
ning would have been earlier and more frequent,
and the mature crop would have been larger and

232, OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

more valuable, while the underplanting would
have been another source of income, and not
merely an investment unprofitable in itself save
for the benefit it produced on the overwood.
Were all the requisite data available, the proof
of this would be simply a matter of calculation ;
but they are wanting as yet for such a specific
purpose.

When planted among other young crops larch
will generally maintain for a considerable time
any advantage in height given to it, and its light
shade will not interfere to any excessive extent
with their growth. Whether, later on, the larch
is to be retained as part of the ultimate crop,
or removed if caught up and pressed by the
other trees, is a question which can only be
settled when it arises, after consideration of the
local market prices for the timber in question.
As a standard in copse, along with oak and
ash, it can well hold out a rotation of 100 to
120 years, thus producing timber of specially
valuable dimensions. One seldom sees it in
hedges, and yet it is really far better adapted
for being grown thus, especially with pruning
of the lower branches, than many of the standard

AMONG THE PINES AND FIRS 233

trees which have been favoured there in Britain
from time immemorial.

Owing to its impatience of shade, even of the
lightest description by parent standards, artificial
regeneration of larch is the rule. Hitherto, in
Britain, this has been almost entirely by means
of planting; but sowing, either broadcast after
ploughing the whole land, or else in rills if
the land is only partially prepared in strips for
the reception of the seed, seems deserving of
a trial as being perhaps cheaper, and certainly
more likely to yield a thicker crop. The seed
will germinate most freely on the best patches
of land, and the blanks and backward spots
can be planted up with Corsican or Scots pine,
or whatever seems most advisable under the
given circumstances.

To try and obviate the disappointment and
loss caused by canker, experiments are being
largely made in Britain with the Japanese larch
(L. leptolepis, so called from the ‘thin scales’
on its cones), said to be a very hardy species,
and to be almost as rapid in growth and as
useful for timber. But it is yet too soon to
hazard any definite opinion as to its suitability

234 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

for replacing the European species, which has
so often proved itself very profitable despite the
constant insidious attacks of this fell disease.

Like the birch, the most light-demanding of
broad-leaved trees as the larch is among conifers,
it is one of the hardiest and most rapid growers
among our woodland trees, hence it can well be
utilised, wherever necessary, as a nurse for less
hardy species in frost-holes. But then it should
be cut out when it has served its purpose, al-
though there will often be the temptation to
let it stand just a year or two more to grow a
bit larger before being cut out, and that little
advantage may be dearly bought by interference
with the growth of what is meant to be the
permanent crop. A tree here and there, how-
ever, should always add something to the value
of the crop, so long as this retention of larch
is not done on too large a scale.

Hedgerow Trees & Hedges

THE hedges and hedgerow trees are among
the fairest possessions of our beautiful country.
They form the chief features of English land-
scape, and give to it a beauty unknown on the
Continent of Europe, where field joins field in
dreary monotony without hedge or fence. It
has, no doubt, ever been so. ‘Trees were con-
venient to mark off different holdings, and they
were connected by live fences grown for shelter ;
so hedges and hedgerow trees have always been,
along with scattered remnants and other patches
of woodland, among the great features of rural
England. In the sixteenth century Holinshed

tells us how, ‘in the woodland countries there is
235

236 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLAND

almost no hedge that hath not some store of the
greatest sort (of trees), beside infinit numbers of
hedgerows . . . that are mainteined of purpose
for the building and provision of such owners
as doo possesse the same.’

Oak had then always the preference, though
nowadays elm is certainly the tree most commonly
to be found along country lanes and among the
hedges, where it throws up abundant suckers,
giving free choice for standards at convenient
distances.

From a purely business point of view there
can be no doubt that the growth of hedgerow
trees is in direct opposition to the highest farm-
ing of the land. All standard trees interfere,
some more, some less, with the growth of crops
on arable land, and even the shelter given to
cattle and sheep on pasture lands would be
much more effective if narrow shelter-belts were
planted than it can possibly be by means of
standard trees scattered among the hedgerows.
That hedgerow timber prejudices the yield of
arable land is a factor which now receives a
certain amount of practical consideration. In

Oxfordshire, for example, farm leases used to

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 237

have a clause, in favour of the landlord, that
the hedgerows should contain not less than a
certain number of standard trees; but one
of the effects of the fall in the agricultural
value of land has been that for some ten
years back, or more, a change of this clause
has been made, in favour of the farmer this
time, that not more than a certain number
of trees may be retained as hedgerow timber.
It is the luxury of the great landowners, freely
enjoyed by the nation at large; but it is not eco-
nomical or consistent with the best utilisation of
arable or pasture land. To forestall loud censure
for this opinion, subversive of the existing order
of things, I would seek shelter under so well
known an authority on Agriculture as the editor
of the last edition of Stephen’s Book of the Farm
‘(Div. v. p. 219); and he likewise fortifies his
opinion by quoting, with approval, from Lord

Kames, that ‘To plant trees in the line of a
| hedge, or within a few feet of it, ought to be
absolutely prohibited as a pernicious practice.’

It would certainly be a national calamity for
the lover of beautiful scenery if agricultural
improvement could ever go so far as to efface

238 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

all the hedgerow timber from the face of rural
England; but this is never likely to be the
case. What might however, not altogether
without advantage, take place is, that more con-
sideration might be given to the choice of
standard trees to be grown there. True, it is
indeed impossible to name kinds having specific
advantages as hedgerow trees, for all of them
damage the crop to some extent; hence the
only thing remaining is to see which are least
objectionable, as doing least harm to pasturage
or to the cereal and root crops grown in the
fields. To some extent damage may be obviated
by pruning, but there are somewhat narrow limits
to this.

If shelter be wanted, elm, maple, and syca-
more have the advantage of coming into leaf early
in spring. But then the elm is both a greedy’
robber of the soil-nutrients meant for the field-
crops and a hindrance to the ploughshare (vide
page 148), while the heavy foliage and the spread-
ing branches of the other two damage the crops
greatly by overshadow and drip. Heavily-foliaged
trees like beech, hornbeam, and_ horse-chestnut
are quite out of place in a hedge, as their drip

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 239

destroys it and makes blanks. The lime, too,
has the disadvantages of a spreading habit and
a thick shade. Ash does comparatively little
damage by overshadowing, but then it is as
greedy and objectionable as the elm. Old writers
on rural economy recommended this as the best
means of growing oak for the navy, and it cer-
tainly was one of the best ways of growing
crooked timber; but the conditions as to timber
supplies and growing of corn are vastly different
now from what they were then, and the spreading
habit of oak renders it now unsuitable for growth
in the hedgerows. Yet it still is, next to elm,
the standard most often seen in country lanes
and at the edge of the fields. None of the
‘aquatic trees’ are naturally suited for occupy-
ing such a position, and Heaven defend England
from rigid rows of tall Lombardy poplars, which,
like Noah’s Ark trees, line the roadways of rural
France and Germany. Most of our. broad-leaved
trees, and all of the best of them, are objec-
tionable except on the score of beauty, from
which point of view oak, elm, and ash, the
somewhat thinly-foliaged trees, reign supreme;
for those of denser foliage soon acquire a formal,

240 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

solid appearance, less graceful in outline and in
general esthetic effect.

And what then remains for consideration as
standards in our hedgerows? ‘The only other
large trees worth thinking of are the Acacia or
Locust tree (Robinia pseudacacia) and the larch.
But the larch would have to be so cleared of its
lower branches that it. would be hardly what
one would call a beautiful object in the hedge-
rows; while the acacia, yielding excellent tough
wood, throws shallow roots around, is spreading
in its growth, and is apt to have its branches
torn off by heavy winds. It is more a tree for
planting on deep sandy soils or on light pasture
lands, where the locust pods can be enjoyed by
the cattle.

So, after all, guided by the principle above
laid down, the conclusion forced upon one seems
to be that the least objectionable trees in hedge-
rows are the minor kinds, such as mountain
ash, laburnum, wild cherry, field maple, service
tree, and the like. And, fortunately, these are
among the most beautiful of our trees, either in
the gorgeousness of their spring flowers, or in
the full, rich, mellow colouring of their autumn

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 241

foliage. Who shall affirm that the spring beauty
of wild cherry or laburnum surpasses the autum-
nal glory and richness of field maple, rowan,
and service tree, or vice verse? Of these a
larger store than of big trees can be reserved in
the hedgerows without prejudicing the growth
of the crops so much; and some of them yield
useful small timber for ordinary estate purposes.
It is, indeed, very much open to question if the
selection of hedgerow trees has hitherto received
anything like the attention it deserves; yet it is
often not one of the least important points in
the rural economy of certain parts of England.
In some places even good fruit trees might be
grown there with profit, like the apples, pears,
and plums planted along public roads in many
parts of Germany, which not only cover the
cost of maintaining the highway, but also yield
a good annual surplus.

With regard to the live hedges themselves,
they are subject to precisely the same law as
the woodlands,—highwoods, copses, and coppice-
woods,—the law of demand for light and of
capacity for bearing shade. The best hedges are

formed by trees and shrubs having the thickest
Q

242 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

foliage and the greatest power of enduring shade,
along with a good reproductive power, such
as beech, hornbeam, yew, spruce, silver fir, holly,
hawthorn, hazel, and in a minor degree black-
thorn, maple, wild cherry, and the like. But the
advantage, for general use, rests with the minor
trees and shrubs, and particularly with those
that are of a thorny nature, fitting them also as
fences against cattle. One drawback to hedges
of trees like spruce is that they require constant
trimming to prevent them throwing up long
leading shoots. As regards all hedges, their
thickness and their vigour in growth must of
course be more or less impaired by the retention
of standards. The heavier the overshadowing
and drip from these, and the nearer their crowns
to the hedge, the more must be the damage done
to this. Too many standards, neglect to prune
all low branches, and to remove the trees before
the hedges are badly injured, must often cause
far more loss than is counterbalanced by the
profit the trees bring in to account, because in
such cases, as in others, the work of destruction
is often rapid, while that of reconstruction is slow
and costly.

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 243

Beech makes a first-rate hedge, because the dead
leaves remain persistent, as in young plantations,
when the older woods shed their russet foliage
in October. Hornbeam is also very good, being
surpassed only by hawthorn and beech for general
hedging purposes. Excellent hedges can also be
made of yew, holly, spruce, silver fir, privet, Por-
tugal laurel, boxwood, myrtle, and juniper; but
all of these are really only suitable for gardens
and ornamental grounds, and not for the rough
wear and tear of field hedges. But beware of
forming a yew hedge wherever horses and cattle
may at any time chance to graze near it. Ever
and anon the newspapers exhibit the views held,
or the discoveries just made by individuals, as to
the toxic effects or the harmlessness of yew. Long
ago that point was fairly settled as regards horses
and cattle, though sheep can eat of yew with im-
punity. There is no more unprejudiced evidence
than that of gentle Gilbert White, as given in his
Observations on Vegetables, that ‘A horse tied
to a yew-hedge, or to a faggot-stack of dead
yew, shall be found dead before the owner can
be aware that any danger is at hand; and the
writer has been several times a sorrowful witness

244 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

to losses of this kind among his friends; and in
the island of Ely had once the mortification to
see nine young steers or bullocks of his own
all lying dead in a heap from browsing a little
on a hedge of yew in an old garden, into which
they had broken in snowy weather. . . . True it
is that yew trees stand for twenty years or more
in a field, and no bad consequences ensue; but
at some time or other cattle, either from wanton-
ness when full, or from hunger when empty
(from both which circumstances we have seen
them perish), will be meddling to their certain
destruction.’

Evelyn admired the holly, and who does not?
He went into positive raptures about it. ‘But,
above all the natural Greens which enrich our
home-born store, there is none certainly to be
compar’d to the Holly ; insomuch as I have often
wonder’d at our Curiosity after forreign Plants,
and expensive difficulties, to the neglect of the
culture of this vulgar, but incomparable Tree ;
whether we will propagate it for Use, and Defence ;
or for sight and ornament.

‘Is there under heaven a more glorious and
refreshing object of the kind, than an impreg-

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 245

nable Hedge of one hundred and sixty foot in length,
seven foot high, and jive in diameter, which I can
shew in my poor Gardens at any time of the year,
glitt’ring with its arm’d and vernish’d Jeaves ?
the taller Standards at orderly distances blushing
with their natural Cora//: It mocks at the rudest
assaults of the Weather, Beasts, or Hedge-breaker.
.. . Et illum nemo impune lacessit.

‘True it is, that “me must bring this tree to
perfection; it does so to all things else, e¢
posteritate pangimus. But what if a little culture
about the Roots (not dunging which it abhorres)
and frequent stirring of the mould doubles its
growth? We stay even years for a tolerable
Quick, it is worth staying it ¢hrice for this, which
has no Competitor.’

Of all kinds of trees or shrubs, however, the
Hawthorn, May, or Quick (Crategus Oxyacantha)
makes the best live hedge for fields. Taken for
all in all, no other plant is so suitable. Growing
easily in a great variety of soils, it exhibits a
considerable degree of density, and can, if well
maintained, resist pressure; while its thorny
branches keep cattle and sheep from trying to
force their way through it. Limy and marly

246 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

soils suit it best, yet it grows well on any sort
of dry land capable of being used agriculturally.
On high situations with a light soil, however,
the hedge can occasionally be much improved by
mixing beech, or hornbeam (except on chalky
soils), to the extent of about one-third along with
the thorn, as apparently even here the soil-
improving qualities of the dead beech-leaves,
rich in potash, are of benefit to the quick. But
the advantages of mixed crops, a sound principle
for most kinds of woodlands, do not extend to
hedges. The use of the shade-bearing beech and
hornbeam is, however, often necessary to fill gaps
in thorn hedges caused by rank growth of weeds.
One decided drawback to this admixture of beech
and hornbeam is, that cattle soon find out that
these are not thorny, and then they often force
their way through, undeterred by any fear of being
torn or pricked. To make the hedge more of a
fence, sweetbriar is often mixed with hawthorn ;
but it soon spreads and interferes with the latter.
Wherever the thorn thrives, as on heavy loams,
it is certainly best to keep it pure and clean. On
very light land, however, like most sands, or
gravel, it is apt to die suddenly; and in such

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 247

places beech is the best hedge for farm purposes
and protection. On poor soils, and especially
within the influence of the sea-breeze, the Myro-
bella or Cherry-plum (Prunus Myrobalana) seems
worthy of encouragement as a hedge-plant, for it
stands cutting almost as well as the hawthorn.
Less suitable species for hedging purposes are
the field maple, dogwood, spindle tree, elm,
hazel, elder, blackthorn, buckthorn, wild cherry,
crab apple, barberry, and the like, which add
greatly to the beauty of the country-side, though
often at the cost of giving a ready excuse for the
wholesale use of barbed wire, that curse of many
hunting counties. Rural England would certainly
be much less charming than it is were the cold
north-east winds of the ‘blackthorn winter’ to
blow without bringing the white blossoms of the
sloe in March and paving the way for the flower-
ing of the wild cherry and the crab apple, while
autumn would be less lovely without the rich
colouring of the leaves of the field maple, dog-
wood, and other gorgeously foliaged shrubs. But
they are not good for the hedges, either considered
as fences or as a shelter against wind. And still
less in their proper place are the chiefest glory of

248 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

English hedgerows and lane-sides, the wild roses,
blackberries and raspberries, the trailing honey-
suckle or woodbine, the wild clematis, beautiful
alike as the ‘traveller’s joy’ of summer or the
“old man’s beard’ of winter, and all the many
lovely wild plants that make our Island fairer
than any other country, and pleasanter to dwell
in, despite certain drawbacks in the matter of
climate. But, alas! where this wealth of beauty
is greatest, the hedges are usually in the most
neglected and least economical condition. Clean,
well-kept hedgerows should show but a small
proportion of ‘weeds’ of this sort, beautiful
though they be in themselves. Weeds, however,
are merely plants out of place; and the hedge-
rows just happen not to be the proper place for
such plants as ought to be cultivated in a ‘ wild
garden.”

In many parts of Scotland and Ireland dry-
stone dykes are common, or the common whin
or furze is used as a hedge plant. It is not
really an economical hedge, and in most cases
beech, or even birch at high altitudes, would
probably be much preferable and cheaper in the
end, though costing more to form, because a

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 249

whin fence is apt to be damaged by severe frost,
and rabbits soon swarm along the hedgerow and
make it open and of little use as a fence.

The shape of the hedge is a matter worthy of
more consideration than it often receives. Thick»
square-shaped, and narrow upright hedges can
be very conveniently grown in gardens, home-
parks, and pleasure-grounds; but with regard to
field-hedges the form must necessarily be one by
which effective protection can be secured with
least outlay for maintenance, and this is best
attained by a shape varying from a sharp-pointed
triangle to something of a paraboloid form. In
high situations, where heavy falls of snow may lie
for a long time on the hedges, the advantage lies
in having rather a narrow-based, pointedly wedge-
shaped outline as the contour of a section;
whereas in the milder and more sheltered agri-
cultural districts broad bulging sides, meeting at
a bluntish apex, make a finer hedge and a better
fence against cattle. The drawbacks against these
advantages are the wider growing-space its
greater breadth requires, and the larger amount
of attention it demands to maintain it and keep
it close and trim.

250 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

Just as it is infinitely preferable and cheaper in
the long run to keep farm buildings and out-
houses in good repair, rather than have consider-
able outlay forced upon one from time to time,
so also is it in every way economical to see
that all hedges around fields or plantations
are kept in proper order. In not a few parts
of Britain the neglect, or even the disloyalty
of tenants, in this matter is only equalled by
what at first thought might seem the apathy
of estate agents and landowners. This, however,
is merely one phase of the agricultural depression
spreading over the last quarter of a century.
Tenants will naturally endeavour to save as much
as they can on the tending and maintenance ot
hedges, while agents and landowners are often
only too glad to have tenants at all on the farms
to insist too stringently on the letter of the lease
in this respect. But there can be no doubt that,
while the maintenance of the hedges in clean and
good condition is easy and not unduly expensive,
the repair of neglected hedgerows is truly ‘ spend-
thrift,’ costly alike as to money and time. Good,
well-kept hedges, properly cleaned and pruned, can
be maintained on well-managed estates in different

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 251

parts of the country for about a farthing a yard
per annum, or 36s. 8d. per mile of hedgerow,
while neglected hedges can easily run into ten times
that amount before they are brought back again
into really proper, serviceable condition. Regular
cutting and cleaning are essential for the proper
maintenance of live hedges. Unless the growth
of grass and of other weeds is checked, which
always find their way there through the seeds
being carried by birds or borne by wind, these
soon begin to interfere with the lower branches
of the hedge, and affect its utility. Really well-
kept hedges should not only be trimmed either in
late autumn or early spring, but they should also
be cleaned in June, and, where necessary, again
in August. Autumn trimming minimises danger
from snow, while spring pruning makes the
country more beautiful in winter, and leaves a
kindly store of food in the shape of hips, haws,
and other berries and fruits for the farmers’
friends among the birds. The earlier the hedger
does his work with switch and bill before the rise
and flow of the sap, the better for the hedge.
During the spring and summer cleaning of
the hedgerows all herbaceous and woody plants

252 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

should be removed. Everything likely to inter-
fere with the growth and compactness of the
hedge, down to the very ground, should be cut
away in the endeavour to keep the fence as
clean and effective as possible. Of course, taking
things as one actually finds them, this high
standard can never be reached in practice, though
it should be aimed at so far as is feasible. A
special order should, however, be given to the
hedger about the cutting out of the most noxious
class of weeds, such as barberry. This not only
finds its way into hedges, but is even regularly
used for hedging in some parts, as, for instance,
in some of the Perthshire valleys. Yet it is a
standing danger to wheat crops by reason of
being the host upon whose leaves the smut or
wheat-rust of Puccinia graminis has its change of
generation before it can again reproduce itself to
scourge the farmer. All around Pitlochry one
can see hedges having a free growth of fungus-
infected barberry and strengthened with slabs of
cankered larch, that might well form an object-
lesson both to the farmer and to the forester.
Thin hedges may best be thickened, and gaps be
filled, by planting. This can preferably be done

HEDGEROW TREES AND HEDGES 253

either in November or else late in February, but in
the latter case it is well to prepare the soil before-
hand in the autumn. Other methods are also
often adopted, though where hedges are well
trimmed annually and properly cleaned, little or
no outlay should be necessary for filling blanks.
In some parts of the country the common prac-
tice is to strengthen weak, thin fences, trimmed
merely every few years in place of annually, by
only partially cutting through the poles without
completely severing them from the stool, and
interweaving these poles, when trimmed, with
the scrubby growth of the fence. This rather
slovenly, stop-gap sort of system is one that
is very largely practised in Herefordshire, where
it is known as ‘pletching.’ A very similar word,
‘plashing,’ is used in Hampshire as the local term
for layering; but ‘ pletching’ or interweaving is
of interest as an example of a still living word
already recorded as obsolete in Johnson’s Dic-
tionary. These old rural terms, of which many
exist, are well worth preserving as a heritage not
to be despised. Indeed, one great fault of nearly
all of the recent contributions to what is called
‘scientific’ Forestry, in contradistinction to the

254 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

British arboricultural methods hitherto prevailing,
is that French and German terms have, quite
unnecessarily, been introduced into books and
practical work. We have excellent, well-defined,
good old English and Scottish terms, such as
‘fall,’ ‘curfe,’ ‘highwoods,’ ‘copse,’ ‘stores,’
‘heirs,’ and the like, which are better than the
expressions sought to be introduced. The latter
should certainly be weeded out in favour of our
own stock of words handed down to us from
olden times. It will be no hard task to graft on
simple words to express operations, methods, and
conditions new to British F orestry without dis-
carding our old expressive terms in favour of
strange French words or ponderous and still
stranger Teutonisms.

CHAPTER IX

Highwoods, Copses,
& Coppicewoods

THE ancient English Forest Charters and
Statutes only recognise two classes of woodland
crops, namely, woods or highwoods (Boscus) and
coverts or underwoods (Subboscus). As can easily
be understood, copse (stored coppice, or coppice
with standards) and coppice (Sylva cedua) were
subsequent, and probably only casual, develop-
ments of the original forms of woodland.
Whether the woodland crops be now managed
as woods or highwoods for the production of
timber of large size, or as copse, or else as
coppices or underwoods, they are all, when

treated economically with the main object of
255

256 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

producing an income, subject to the same prin-
ciples as to management. Each of these three
possible systems of treating woodland crops re-
presents an investment of capital with regard
to the growing stock, in addition to the capital
value of the land; but there are, of course,
very wide variations between the capital re-
quired, say, for osier-holts maturing in from
three to five years and then producing a crop
capable of being harvested annually, and high-
woods of conifers or of oak and other hard-
woods, which only attain their full financial
maturity at ages varying from about seventy
to considerably over a hundred years of age.
In this latter case it must always happen that
the capital represented by the standing crops
of timber exceeds considerably, in actual mone-
tary worth, the freehold value of the land.
But, under all the three systems of forest
management there is — and, from the very
nature of the investment, it is self-evident that
there must be—a certain very close relation
between the capital in wood-crops which ought
to be on the ground, so as to utilise and at
the same time safeguard the productiveness of

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 257

this in the most thorough manner possible,
and the system of cropping selected, whether
highwood, copse, or coppice. If the crops are
too thin, whether this be caused either by wide
planting or by premature thinnings, as is only
too often the case throughout Britain, then the
productiveness of the soil is not utilised to its
full extent, which means that the income de-
rived is not so large as it might be, while there
must also exist the danger that the soil is
not being so well protected against the deterio-
rating effects of sun and wind as would other-
wise be the case with crops forming closer cover.
And these two factors mutually act and re-act
on each other. On the other hand, if the
crops stand too thick, that is to say, if ade-
quate thinning be neglected, then the crops are
exposed to the danger of becoming weakly in
growth and very injuriously affected as to their
ultimate value when mature and ready for the fall.
In this latter case, the greater density of the crop
adds nothing appreciable to the capital value of
the land; onthe contrary, it rather depreciates it if
judged by the practical standard of its productive-

ness in growing woodland crops for the market.
R

258 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

In each system of management there is there-
fore a certain amount of capital which can be
invested with profit in the growing stock, and
which must in fact be invested in order to
obtain the best returns from the land. And it
is one of the main objects of Forestry to indicate
theoretically, as well as to arrange practically,
how the necessary capital in wood can best be
adjusted and distributed over the woodland area,
in order to produce the most advantageous re-
turns in the shape of a regular yield sustained
annually. While the market available for
woodland produce must of course be one of
the chief factors in determining the kinds of
crops to be grown and the system of manage-
ment to be accorded to them, yet the soil, the
situation, and the local climate generally are
all matters of importance for financial success ;
and these have frequently in the past received
less attention than they require. Hence the result
has often been that the growth of the crops
has been unsuccessful. Annticipations not having
been realised, many landowners have thought
that Forestry does not pay in Britain. But this
is due to the bad effects of these investments,

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 259

often decidedly speculative in the case of larch,
not being attributed to their true causes—to
want of knowledge of the very simple scien-
tific and economic principles upon which the
art of Forestry is based.

The main object of commercial Forestry is to
obtain the largest and most profitable returns
from the land in the shape of a regular yield
sustained annually. Hence, as regards the
amount of capital to be invested in the grow-
ing stock of woodland crops, the principle is
that (subject of course to yielding produce of
the dimensions required for the available market)
it shall be neither more nor less than is requisite
to produce the best regular income from the
land under wood. With regard to coppices, the
capital which can most suitably be arranged for
is that which permits of the fall being made
in the shortest possible rotation without ex-
posing the soil to the danger of deterioration
from sun and wind through being repeatedly
laid bare by too frequent harvesting of the crop.
In highwoods, however, the capital locked up
in the growing stock, which is much larger than
that required for copse or for coppice, will be

260 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

retained in the woods so long as actuarial cal-
culations (for which the rate of growth shown
by the trees themselves and the local market
prices afford the only practical data) show that
the woods are still in full vigour, and that the
increment being annually made (judged by its
equivalent under the monetary standard) is not
already beginning to diminish.

Experience shows that in highwoods the
longer periods of rotation prove advantageous
on the better classes of land, while in copse
and in coppices the shortest periods are only
permissible on good soils and favourable situa-
tions. That is to say, on the better classes of
woodland soil highwoods can be profitably grown
with a longer rotation than on poor land; while
in copse and coppice the fall can be repeated all
the more frequently the better the quality of the
land, because there is not the same danger of
deterioration by frequent exposure.

Unfortunately, no average data on any large
scale are as yet available from British woods
to prove these facts, though they are matters
of common experience in practice. In default
of such statistical tables for Britain, it may

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC.

261

perhaps be permissible to give the following as

the average annual rates of increase in growth
in cubic feet (reduced to the customary British
‘ square-of-quarter-girth” measurement) yielded

by ordinarily well-managed woodland crops
throughout the Hanoverian forests :—

General Quality of Soil and Situation for the given kind

of Tree or form of Crop.

Kind of Crop.
Age of Age of Age of
Crop. Good. Crop. | Moderate. | Crop. Poor.
Years. Years. Years.
7 Growth in Growth in Growth in
Highwoods. cubic feet cubic feet cubic feet
per annunt. per annum. per annum.
Oak. . 160 | 45 to60 | 140 | goto45 | 120 | 30 to 40
Beech . 140 | 50to65 | 120 | 43 to 49 90 | 30 to 43
Spruce. 120 | 75to95 | 100 | 64 to 72 7o | 40to 57
Scots Pine 120 | 48to75 | 100 | goto 48 60 | 21 to 39
Copse.
Oak standards,
over coppice
of mixture of 18 | 48 to 54 20 | 40 to 42 25 | 28 lo 36
hardwoods
and softwoods
Coppices.
Oak, with other
hardwoods, 15 | 48 to 53 18 | about 4o 20 | 21 to 32
hazel, &c. .
Ald -
hy rar 25 | 62to 79 30 | 48 to 54 35 | 24 to 38
Say, for example, that a Scots pine wood

which has long been growing actively begins

about seventy years of age to show signs of

262 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

falling off in growth, i.e. to yield less of a
return on the capital represented by soil plus
growing stock than has until now been the
case, then obviously it will be good business
to clear it off and utilise the land for the pro-
duction of a younger and more vigorous crop.

It would of course be extremely inconvenient
—nay, impossible in view of a regularly sustained
annual yield—to treat every portion of a large
woodland area in this particular manner on its
own individual merits, but a general scheme as
to rotation of the fall for given kinds of tree-
crops in the given local circumstances can con-
veniently be arranged and followed. When,
these last being duly considered, the kind of
crop, the system of management, and the
rotation of the fall have been fixed on, the
capital in wood must, in order to provide a
regularly sustained annual yield, be adjusted
and distributed in such a manner that each
successive year’s fall shall consist of an equal
or, rather, an equally productive area, while
the capital in growing stock must consist of
such number of equally productive areas as
there are years in the period of rotation from

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 263

one fall of mature crop to the succeeding fall
on the same area. In coppice worked with a
rotation of ten years there will be ten such
equally productive annual falls; in copse felled
over every twenty years, twenty such; and in
highwoods worked with a rotation of eighty
years, eighty such annual falls. And the only
proper adjustment and distribution of the
capital in timber or other growing stock of
smaller dimensions in the woodlands must be
that the crops on such equally productive annual
falls shall form an unbroken series from 1 to
10, 1 to 20, and 1 to 80 years respectively in
the above cases. Without this, regularity in
obtaining a sustained yield annually is im-
possible; and no available market can be
utilised to the best advantage if the quantity
of wood offered one year is large, the next
year small, a third year wanting altogether, and so
on irregularly. ‘First a hunger, then a burst,’
is bad in this as in all other cases.

The proper adjustment of capital in wood-
land crops is therefore—no matter whether
highwood, copse, or coppice be the form of
management adopted—precisely of the nature

264 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

of a simple arithmetical progression. In the
above examples the: series of portions of the
crops would respectively be aged 1-10, I-20,
1-80 years just before the fall in each
year, while immediately after the fall it
would be Oo-9, O-19, O-—79 years, and
at midsummer it would be 4-94, 4-193,
-4—794 years. Hence, by summarising these
series, the necessary capital in growing stock will
be found to be in the above cases respectively
equal to five, ten, and forty times the amount
of that portion of the crop which comes to
the fall as the. harvest of each year; because
what comes annually to the fall as the mature
crop, leaving thinnings out of consideration, is
the incorporation of the annual growths from
time of formation of the crop up to ten,
twenty, and eighty years respectively. The
correctness of this can be easily represented
graphically. Assuming that the total sum of
the annual growths incorporated in the mature
fall consists of equal annual increments (which
is not in reality the case, though this fact
does not affect the total volume), if a series be
formed of the annual falls of equal breadth

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 265

this will result in presenting an indented inclined
plane. And the area of this will be calculable (as
that of a right-angled- triangle) by multiplying
the height of the triangle (representing the fall
of mature timber for each year) into the base
(representing the number of years forming the
period of rotation), and dividing the result by
two; because the indentations can be eliminated
as above shown in summarising the arithmetical
progression. From this it will be very clear that
the length of rotation not only reduces the area
that can be cropped annually, but also adds very
considerably to the capital required in timber.
Suppose, for example, that there are two
estates having each 800 acres of similar land
under mixed crops of larch and pine, and that
one of them is worked on an eighty years’
rotation, with an annual fall averaging 10
acres, while the other is cropped with a rota-
tion of one hundred years, and an annual fall
averaging 8 acres; and suppose, also, that
the yield of the mature crop is in the former
case 7000 cubic feet per acre, while in the
latter it is 8500 cubic feet; then, in the
former case, the capital required in timber

266 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS
properly adjusted and distributed regularly

over equally productive areas coming succes-
sively to each year’s fall would be

7000 (cb. ft.) x 80 (years)

Io (acres) x -

= 2,800,000 cubic feet, while in the latter case

it would be
8500 (cb. ft.) x 100 (years)
2

= 3,400,000 cubic feet. These figures may
perhaps suggest that the eighty years’ rota-
tion would probably be the more profitable,

8 (acres) x

involving, as it does, so much less capital in
timber; but, in the woods worked with the
longer rotation, the timber would be of larger
dimensions and higher market value. More-
over, a certain portion of the timber included
in the mature fall at eighty years of age will
likely be cut as thinnings, between eighty and
one hundred years, in the longer rotation; and
this must of course be taken into account when
trying to determine which rotation is the more
profitable way of utilising the land. From
this it can also be noted how misleading it
may be in Forestry, as in other matters, to
jump to conclusions on mere prima facie ap-

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 267

pearances; for the determining of the rotation
of the largest probable profit is a matter purely
of actuarial calculation, which is to a consider-
able extent the basis of economic Forestry. In
fact, Forestry, conducted on purely business
principles, consists of two main branches.
These are, firstly, she growing of woodland
crops, an art based chiefly on knowledge of
Vegetable Physiology, and, secondly, the harvest-
ing of the crops at the most profitable age, an eco-
nomic arrangement determinable absolutely and
entirely by local and actuarial considerations.

It may perhaps be as well to remark that
in the above supposititious case the annual yield
is really (in customary British square-of-quarter-
girth measurement) below the actual yield usually
obtained from well-managed conifer woods in
Germany; and with good management this
should certainly not be less in our climate.
Assuming the whole of the capital in timber
to be worth only 3d. per cubic foot, and the
mature fall to fetch merely 6d. per cubic foot
at 80 years and, say, 8d. at 100 years, then
with the eighty years’ rotation the entire grow-
ing stock of timber would have a capital value

268 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

of £35,000, and would (along with the capital
value of the land) yield an annual return
of £1750, or £2, 38. gd. per acre; while
with the one hundred years’ rotation the
entire woods would be worth £42,500, and
would bring in a continuous income of
4£2266%, or £2, 16s. 8d. per acre, as the
interest on the capital in timber and the
rental from the land. ‘But,’ I think I hear
some landowner suggest, ‘it seems absurd to
have so large a capital in timber on so small
an area. One could do much better with it if
he cleared the timber altogether, invested the
proceeds in other commercial projects, and got
whatever else he could from the land.’ Not
so, however. If all the capital were in the
form of marketable timber, the order could,
taking advantage of what might seem a
favourable turn of the market, be given to
denude the broad acres and convert the
timber into money; but, as most of the crops
must be immature, realisation could only take
place at a heavy loss. Timber-growing is not
like stock-jobbing or investments in shares, which
can be changed from time to time as desired.

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 269

It is essentially of the nature of a permanent,
a gradual, and a very rapidly accumulating
investment. It should only be embarked upon
after fujl consideration of the matter, and
should only be conducted either with personal
knowledge or else under competent advice.
No landowner would ever dream of investing
435,000 to £42,500 on mortgages or ordi-
nary investments without his lawyer’s advice or
some other specialist’s opinion; yet many of
the large plantations of Britain have been
formed on rather haphazard methods, and are
not being managed as well as they might be.
If the woods and coppices are fully stocked,
as should be aimed at under good manage-
ment, then the necessary capital in the grow-
ing crops is equal to the yield of the mature
fall of each year multiplied by half the num-
ber of years in the period of rotation. If the
bulk of the land is stocked with crops younger
than half the period of rotation, then the
capital in woods or coppices is insufficient to
yield the best return from the land in the
shape of a regularly-sustained annual yield;
while, if the majority of the crops is older than

270 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

that limit, the capital in timber can with advan-
tage be gradually reduced as such portions come
to their maturity and fall. The beechwoods, as
managed in portions of southern England,
form an exceptional class. Here the trees of
all ages, from the seedling to the mature stem,
are grown together on the same area, and the
fall extends over a far larger acreage than a
mere annual section. This treatment is of
course only possible through the beech being
able to bear shade well. But, even in this case,
the best results will usually be obtainable by
division of the forest into blocks, and by
treatment of these in regular succession, as
previously indicated on page 142.

I am afraid the above is somewhat technical ;
but if the future market for timber is really
going to be so profitable as seems likely, then
any indication of the above nature will not have
been given in vain if it may perhaps induce land-
owners and estate-agents to give closer attention
to the principles upon which Forestry is based,
as distinguished from Arboriculture. And I
would particularly desire to draw attention
to the fact that, in some respects, growing

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 271

timber for profit differs essentially from almost
any other kind of investment. For instance,
the cheapest method of forming woods, suc-
cessful natural regeneration, under favourable
circumstances costing less than sowing and much
less than planting, often builds up the largest
possible capital in timber, and gives the best
returns, both in the way of intermediate thin-
nings and of the ultimate mature crop. The
main point to be aimed at is the formation of
normal density in a young wood, with the
proper number of stems per acre, and the
cheaper this can be obtained the better. But
when once this object has been effected, the
whole of the subsequent value of the crops—
as regards capital in timber, improvement in
the value of the land, and ultimate yield in
annual income—depends mainly on the manner
in which the woods are protected and tended
under a well-considered and rational method of
treatment. Mismanagement, neglect, and over-
thinning may easily, as has so often been the
case hitherto, reduce the annual income, diminish
the capital value of the woods, and dissipate no
inconsiderable portion of the productive power

272 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

of the soil—all owing to interference with the
normal canopy of foliage required for the given
class of wood. It thus differs in toto from Agri-
culture. When large crops are taken from
arable land the soil has to be improved by
manuring ; whereas, in Forestry, the larger the
crops grown, the better is the land spontaneously
manured by the rich fall of dead leaves, and
the more thoroughly is the moisture in the
soil protected against loss by evaporation through
the exhausting effects of sun and wind.

When once coppice or copse has been formed,
each rotation, in either case, may involve a cer-
tain amount of outlay in filling up blanks and
improving the crop; while the regeneration of
highwoods is often coupled with a more consider-
able expenditure, which keeps growing at com-
pound interest until the woods yield a tangible
set-off in the way of thinnings. Notwithstand-
ing the drawback that they lock up a far larger
amount of capital in growing stock than is re-
quired for coppice or for copse, highwoods are
yet in the great majority of cases the most pro-
fitable kinds of woodland crops. Moreover, they
are the only possible form in which larch, pine

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 273

and fir can be grown; and these are, for many
soils and situations in Britain, the only crops
it would be profitable to cultivate on any large
scale. No broad generalisation can, however, be
made with regard to any such matter in Forestry,
owing to the bulky nature of wood crops and
the expense of transport for any distance by land.
When oak-bark was well paid, coppices worked
in a rotation of fourteen or sixteen years yielded
far higher returns than highwoods; and some
of the osier-holts in the fen districts give a
more handsome profit than oak-coppice ever
did. Again, where there is any fair demand for
charcoal for gunpowder, or for cigar-boxes, or
the like, alder-coppice may also, under suitable
conditions as to soil, prove much more remu-
nerative than either copse or highwoods. And
in very many parts of Britain copse has peculiar
advantages of its own, which make it the system
that must find special preference on many estates.
The law of entail makes an important difference
between timber and coppice, the former being
under English law regarded as part of the estate,
the money arising from the sale of which is

treated as capital on which only the interest is
s

274. OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

paid to the owner in possession; while under
Scots law an heir in possession under an entail
can cut the timber as long as his possession
lasts.

One advantage of copse over highwoods is
that an annual fall can be provided for even
in small woodlands. For working highwoods
properly large areas are needed ; copsewoods, on
the other hand, do not necessarily require large
areas. On comparatively small tracts of two
or three hundred acres the management can be
so arranged as to yield small annual supplies
of timber of various sizes at each fall of the
underwood. Another advantage of copse, besides
the comparatively small capital which it locks up,
as compared with high timber forest, is that it is
one of the most convenient forms of management
under which an abnormally heavy fall of timber
might perhaps be arranged for to meet the de-
mand of death duties on a change of ownership in
the estate. The utilisation of a large proportion,
or even all, of the largest classes of standards
would, although of course otherwise to be re-
gretted and a cause of ultimate loss, not produce
such disturbance in the general management as

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 275

if abnormally heavy fellings had to be made in
highwoods approaching maturity—though even
this might be arranged for, if necessary. More-
over, copsewoods are better suited for pheasants,
covert-shooting, and sport generally, than any
other system of management; and this attrac-
tive side to them will always receive, as it well
deserves, the favourable consideration of the
majority of English landowners. And copses are
certainly among the most beautiful woodlands
that we have. In this respect their amenity
exceeds that possessed by either highwoods or
coppice. When to these advantages is added the
further fact that this is one of the best ways
of growing oak, ash, and larch, the most highly
paid of all our woods, there is, apart from
mere esthetic and conservative feelings about the
matter, no lack of justification for continuation of
this excellent system of management in Britain,
even though it be considered from an unsympa~
thetic and almost purely commercial standpoint.
Apart from special local .considerations, the
growth of oak, ash, larch, pine, and fir is always
remunerative in the vicinity of large towns; while

in the hop-districts of England the cultivation

276 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

of small larch poles is often extremely profitable,
without any professional skill being necessary to
grow them. Of somewhat larger growth, so as
to give poles of three inches or more at the
top-end, larch is also highly remunerative as
pit-wood for props in the mines wherever col-
lieries exist, Scots pine coming next to it in
demand for this purpose. Indeed, in mining
districts almost all sorts of small wood can find
a fair market, provided they average about three
to five inches in diameter. Apart, however, from
exceptional cases, and from purely local considera-
tions as to the market for disposal of the wood-
land crops grown, Continental experience on a
much larger scale than is possible in Britain has
shown that mixed crops are preferable to pure
crops of any one or other kind of trees; because
in all cases of suitable mixtures the growth of the
trees is better, and, as regards conifers especially,
larch, pine, and fir are then less exposed to danger
from snowbreak, windfall, insects, and fungous
diseases. It would run into too much space to
consider, in anything like detail, the conditions
under which such mixed crops can best be grown;
but it may at any rate be remarked that one of

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 277

the essential conditions, subsequent to selection
of suitable kinds of trees for the given soil and
situation, is that the more light-demanding tree
or trees must either be of more rapid growth in
height than the others, or else that the former
must be protected against the encroachments of
these latter by means of thinning.

That most of the British woodlands are not
stocked with a sufficiently large number of indi-
vidual plants is an undeniable fact, which applies
alike to highwoods, copses, and coppices. And
yet, at the same time, on account of the excessive
branch formation favoured under the arboricul-
tural methods hitherto prevailing, it sometimes
happens that the woods may even be crowded,
which seems rather paradoxical. Woods that
have been over-thinned may spread so much in
the crown that the damage done can never be
quite repaired. And much the same applies to
wide planting, particularly with regard to conifer
crops, whose dead branches form hard, horny
knots in the stem, which depreciate the value
of the bole for technical purposes. To have the
best monetary returns from the mature crop it
is essential that plantations shall have been sub-

278 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

jected to rational treatment from the very time
of their formation onwards, because good pre-
sent and future management is not of itself, in
many cases, able to correct the mistakes of the
past. Plantations made at wide distances, such
as 6 feet by 6 feet for larch, pine, or spruce,
though below normal density up to fifteen or
twenty years of age, may, if simply left to grow
as they like, become crowded at twenty to thirty
years of age. In such cases the crowding would
be solely due to excessive development of branches,
and not to any excessive number of stems per
acre. Errors of this sort can of course be re-
medied to a certain extent by thinning. It is
also true that thinning is not merely the best
means—it is often, indeed, the only possible
means—of tending timber crops; but the damage
done to timber in Britain by injudicious thinning
throughout the last hundred years might probably
be moderately assessed at many millions of pounds
sterling.

In the case of many of the older woods the
damage thus done has been so great that but
little can now be suggested except to harvest the
over-mature, the most branching, and the least

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 279

satisfactory trees, and to underplant those re-
maining, or else gradually to clear off the whole
of the wood and form a new crop, either by
means of natural regeneration or by sowing and
planting. Again, many young coniferous crops
formed during the last twenty-five to thirty-five
years have been planted at distances varying from
4 feet by 4 feet to 6 feet by 6 feet, with the conse-
quence that some of these latter, of pine especially,
are only now beginning to form close canopy for
woods of their class, and commencing to clean
themselves of their lower branchlets. They are
often now just at the stage when they are likely
to be very prejudicially affected as to their ulti-
mate value as a crop if the past arboricultural
method of heavy thinning be still followed. The
best treatment for such plantations lies in the
careful retention of the close cover now at length
attained, and in the restriction of thinnings to
the mere removal of almost suppressed or of
badly-diseased poles, and the cutting off of dead
branches and snags. Canopy being adequately
maintained, such woods can be thinned every
four or five years, yielding good returns wher-
ever there is a fair market for large poles, till

280 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

the time comes when light-demanding crops, like
larch and Scotch pine, require to be partially
cleared and underplanted, usually at an age vary-
ing from thirty to forty-five years, according to
the soil and the past treatment accorded to the
crop. In some plantations known to me the
ravages of fungous disease have been such that
patches of thirty-year-old larch have had to be
thinned so freely in the past on account of
canker that underplanting is already requisite,
even without the clearance of any of the re-
maining stems, except such as are now also
badly cankered.

As already remarked, although highwoods
yield on the whole the best returns where a
large capital is available for investment in timber
crops, yet copse or ‘stored coppice’ is a system
also offering considerable attractions to owners
of woodlands which are of too small an area to
be worked as highwoods with a regular annual
fall. As in high timber crops, absolute regu-
larity of treatment cannot be effected, nor should
it be aimed at, because changes in the quality,
depth, freshness, and other physical properties
of the soil and situation must of course neces-

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 281

sitate corresponding variations as to both stan-
dard trees and coppice underwood. And the
leading principles are simple; it is, unfortu-
nately, only their practical application which is
often difficult. While the local market will
mainly determine the kinds of trees to be favoured
as standards, the soil and the situation must de-
termine the kinds which can be grown best and
the number of standards that may be allowed to
remain with advantage. The better the soil and
the more sheltered the locality, the greater the
number of standards that can be retained with-
out interfering too much with the growth of
the underwood; and the market open for the
timber will, of course, determine the time at
which the standards should be cleared, as there can
be no advantage in growing these to the age of a
hundred years if trees of sixty or eighty years give
a better profit on the capital they represent. It
is true that standards over coppice have always
a larger proportion of branchwood than trees
grown in regular highwoods, which produce the
longest, straightest, and cleanest stems; but, not-
withstanding this, copse is an excellent method
for growing large and valuable oak, ash, and

282 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

larch, while it allows greater scope to the forester
in adapting his stock of standard trees to suit
the prospects of the market in the comparatively
near future. It is a system of management well
suited for the growth of light-demanding trees,
and especially of oak, ash, and larch; while the
finest returns will be obtained on fresh soils in
sheltered situations, with light-crowned standards
and a dense underwood consisting of ash, syca-
more, maple, hazel, beech, &c., which reproduce
themselves freely, and are capable of bearing a
considerable amount of shade under such favour-
able conditions.

In most British copses both the overwood and
the underwood show deviations to a greater or
less extent from the conditions desirable for
economic treatment. As regards the standards,
the trees, usually oak for the most part, run far
too much into branches, and the boles are defec-
tive, while many of them are over-mature, and
should have been felled long ago to make way
for a younger crop of more vigorous growth.
Again, the overwood is nothing like regularly
distributed over the falls, and there is no normal
gradation of ‘age-classes’ throughout it. Then

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 283

the underwood as a rule suffers from being patchy.
There are usually blanks here and there, and
even throughout the rest of the area the crop is
not as thick as it might be; while it not in-
frequently happens that the stock actually on
the ground is not that which might be grown
with most profit on the given soil and situa-
tion.

These defects of the overwood can only be
remedied gradually during successive falls, so as
to bring the copse into a normally stocked con-
dition. Something may often, however, be done
by judicious pruning to correct the excessive
branch development, by the careful and clean
removal of lower branches not exceeding about
three inches in diameter. The lower side being
cut into first of all, to prevent tearing of the
bark down the stem, the branches should be
sawn off close to the stem, trimmed smooth, and
well tarred to prevent wound-rot, and the tarring
should be repeated till the wounds heal and be-
come completely overgrown. But this operation
must be conducted cautiously in place of being
carried on in a wholesale manner, else the stems
are apt to send out a flush of adventitious shoots

284 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

below the crown, which intercept the passage of
the sap in its upward flow, thus causing ‘stag-
headedness’ and decay of the top of the crown.
Where resorted to, such pruning should take
place early in autumn, as soon as convenient
after the fall of the leaf, when the trees
contain their minimum amount of sap and
moisture.

Apart from such partial remedy, nothing can
be done to correct the faults of uneconomic
treatment. The only complete cure is to utilise
over-mature and excessively-branching standards
as early as may be convenient, and to replace
them by the retention of a better class of over-
wood. And that takes time. This is also the
only way of providing anything like a regular
distribution of standards over the area, and a
normal gradation of age-classes among the over-
wood; because it enables the young ‘stores,’
‘heirs,’ ‘saplings,’ or whatever their local name
may be, to be more or less regularly distributed
over each fall, in greater or less number, accord-
ing to the quality of the soil. And in course
of time it ultimately provides the regular grada-
tion of standards in classes varying from each

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 285

other by an age corresponding with the rotation
of the falls of coppice and overwood.

Say the local conditions as to soil, situation,
and sale of produce recommend a rotation of
twenty years, and permit of an overshadowing of
the underwood which may extend to about two-
thirds of the area at the time of each fall, then
some such distribution of the oak standards may
advantageously be aimed at as the following :—

Sint ars a Total Area overshadowed by the
ae Number Growing. Standards.
al Ss} al OM-)
Mendanis, | Standards| yi*. |"Mmencement
selected of each Just after Just before
fO-remalne Rotation. each Fall. jeach Fall.
Sq. feet. Sq. feet. Sq. feet.
Young Stores . 40 20 25 1000 7000
Double Stores . 20 40 175 3500 gooo
Young Trees . Io 60 450 4500 7000
Old Trees. 5 80 700 3500 5000
Total . 75 he ee 12,500 28,000
Proportion of Area overshadowed by Stan- about nearly % of
dards (on land of good quality only) 7 of area, area,*

* The extent to which overshadowing by the standards is admissible depends greatly on the
quality of the land. In the above particular case the land onthe Blackmoor estate is of very
good quality. Gilbert White speaks of the soil as being ‘remarkable for timber and infamous
for roads. The oaks of Temple and Blackmoor stand high in the estimation of purveyors, and
have furnished much naval timber.’

286

OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

As regards the harvesting of such a crop, each

fall will every twenty years be carried out so

as to include :—

Removed during each Fall.

Standards left after each Fall.

Total number of
Standards felled

}40

Total number of
Standards left

}as

g 4 Remarks.

a. 2 Ee Ago

Class. Yess. g Class. von g

a a
Coppice . 20 | all | Coppice Stools At each fall there
will therefore be
Young Stores. | 40] 20 | Young Stores 20 | 40 removed, along
with the cop-
Double Stores. | 60] 10] Double Stores | 40 | 20 | pice, ad/ the old
trees, an equal
Young Trees .| 80 5 | Young Trees .| 60 | 10 | wumber of
young trees,
Old Trees 100 5 | Old Trees 80 5 | twice as many

double _ stores,
and four times
as many young
stores.

As ash is now so valuable, and the favourable

market for it seems likely to continue and even

improve, the retention of ash standards will

usually prove attractive along with oak, or in

preference to this; while the planting of stout

healthy larch here and there at each time of

the fall will add greatly to the subsequent

value of the overwood.

If the standards were

to consist entirely of ash, then the number of

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 287

stores, &c., in the above suggestions might be
increased by nearly a half; and mixtures of oak
and ash might be calculated on a similar ratio.
The better financial promise held out by ash,
indeed, entitles it to the preference on the whole,
not only because of the larger number retainable
per acre, but also because, thus grown, it would
reach its full maturity at 60 to 80, or at most
100 years, whereas oak might often require
at least 100 years. In many cases, and _par-
ticularly on very limy soils, ash standards will
reach maturity at about 50 to 60 years of
age, when it must be. cut out before becoming
‘black in the heart’ at the lower end of the
stem, a disease which often soon spreads upwards
to the main branches. Even on the loamy soils
that suit it best, it will perhaps be found ad-
visable to remove all the ash standards at the
age of 60 to 80 years, leaving the oak to
grow into old trees of 100 years of age.

The young stems selected as stores, or
‘standels’ as they used generally to be called
long ago, should be of seedling growth, if
available. In any case they should be straight
and shapely, with a compact, high-set crown

288 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

of foliage. At each fall the inferior stems of
each class in the overwood should be harvested,
leaving only the best grown to attain larger and
more profitable dimensions. Where over-mature,
broad crowned trees have to be cut out before
the fall of the coppice takes place in regular
rotation, they should of course be lopped of
all large branches and of their crowns, so as
to reduce to a minimum the damage done to
the underwood when felling.

The defects in the underwoods of most British
copses can be much more easily and speedily
remedied than those in the overwood. By
sowing or dibbling in seeds of oak, ash, maple,
sycamore, chestnut, beech, and in damp places
also hornbeam, on prepared patches in autumn
or spring much can be done to improve the
density of the underwood, and to raise up seed-
lings from which a good class of stores may
be selected to form standards. These patches
may be made of about four feet square, the earth
being well hoed or delved up and thoroughly
mixed and pulverised before sowing the hardwood
seeds. The soil-covering should vary according
to the size of the seed, being somewhat over an

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 289

inch of earth in the case of acorns and chestnuts.
Although slower in attaining the object in view,
the sowing and dibbling in of seeds of hard~-
woods has the advantages over planting of being
much the cheapest method of improving the
crop, and of being far less exposed to danger
from rabbits, as local experience has shown.
Material assistance can also be effectively ren-
dered by ‘plashing’ ash and other hardwoods,
a cheap and simple method of layering strongly
to be recommended in moist localities prone
to heavy growth of weeds which would be likely
to choke seedlings. Both of these measures
should be carried out as early as convenient,
so that the whole area may be gone over and
improved within a very short period. It would
also be advantageous if at the time of the next
fall of coppice, the outer seedlings round all
such dibbled patches should be plashed and the
inner seedlings allowed to grow up to form the
future stores. Wherever the copsewoods seem
well suited for the growth of ash and sycamore,
these species should be encouraged as largely
as may be found practicable. Birch, saugh, and

aspen should, in such cases, be treated as weeds,
T

290 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

and cut out whenever they are found interfering
with the growth of hazel and hardwoods; while
the latter should be freed from interference by
hazel wherever the more valuable species requires
assistance in the individual struggle for light
and growing-space.

If this can be arranged for, it will always be
an advantageous and remunerative operation to
go over the coppice-woods during the third
year after the fall for the purpose of cleaning
them of all weeds (including the softwoods—
birch, aspen, willow) interfering with hardwoods,
and of thinning out the number of shoots spring-
ing from the stools. If this latter operation
be not carried out, then the energy of growth
often becomes dissipated over about six to ten
shoots in place of being concentrated on the
more rapid development of from two or three
to five or six of the more vigorous stool-
shoots. The day for oak-bark being highly
remunerative is passed and gone, to the detri-
ment of our leather prepared with tannic ex-
tracts. But it is no difficult matter to trans-
form coppice into copse by sowing and planting,
or to change the system of treatment from

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 291

copse into highwoods when this form of crop-
ping seems the more advantageous. Sometimes,
indeed, coppice still more than manages to
pay its way, even though in the great majority
of cases the fall in the amount obtainable per
square pole or ‘lug’ of the coppice hags has
made this system far from so profitable a form
of crop as it used to be. And yet, on suitable
land, and in exceptional cases, some forms of
coppice can yield larger returns than any other
kind of woodland crop. This is notably so in
the case of the osier-holts of the fen districts.
There are three chief kinds of osiers or basket
willows, the Common Osier (Salix viminalzs),
with white silky hairs on its leaves; the smooth-
leaved Laurel Osier (5. triandra), and the Purple
Osier (S. purpurea), so called from the colour of
its anthers at the time of flowering. But the
varieties and the crosses between these are almost
innumerable. In the fen country the cost of
ploughing or fallowing and trenching land for an
osier-holt, and of purchasing and planting the
‘sets,’ runs from about £16 to £23 an acre.
The planting is done in February or March with
slips of two-year-old wood from 16 to 18 inches

292 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

long, of which about 10 inches should be set in the
ground. Till the middle of June careful hoeing
and forking is necessary, and this costs from £41 to
42 an acre for each of the first two years till the
crop comes into bearing during the third year,
after which cleaning costs less as the dense and
rapid growth of the osiers prevents or chokes the
growth of weeds. In general, however, newly-
planted holts do not come into full bearing till
their fourth or fifth year. The annual growth
of the ‘rods’ or withies is completed in Septem-
ber, and varies from six to nine feet in length, or
even more in the case of vigorous stools. The
harvesting begins in January if the holts are
not under water or too marshy, and should be
completed before the sap rises, else the stools
‘bleed’ and the next crop is weak. Their
market value is increased by soaking the cut ends
in water and peeling the bark off when the water
has risen in the rods. The yield of rods is about
150 bunches, which may vary in total weight by
so much as from § to 10 tons; but they are re-
duced to about half their bulk when peeled. An
average crop consisting of 150 bunches of green
rods per acre has a market value of about £165,

HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 293

and if the rods are peeled their value may be
increased to nearly £35. Despite the heavy ex-
penditure, much in excess of that for ordinary
woodland crops, on planting, tending, harvesting,
peeling, rent, rates, and taxes, it will thus be seen
that, on suitable classes of land, and within easy
reach of a favourable market, osier-holts can prove
a very remunerative investment; and more especi-
ally so if combined locally with basket-weaving.
But the supply of the raw material for the trade,
and in fact the trade itself, capable of great ex-
tension, is chiefly in the hands of Belgians, French,
and Germans. This is, in fact, merely another
example on a small scale of our strange national
negligence and our indifference to economical
considerations, which permit several millions of
pounds sterling to find their way annually into
the pockets ‘of foreigners for the purchase of
pinewood and fir timber, that we might perfectly
well grow for ourselves, with untold advantages
to the rural population, and to our internal trade
and commerce generally.

IN the first two or three pages of chapter x of
Wild Life in the Hampshire Highlands, one of the
earlier volumes of this Series, Mr. Dewar has
stated the case as to woods and game both well
and moderately: ‘Forestry and game preservation
on a really considerable scale do not by any means
always fit in well with each other,’ he says, while
he gives a concrete example, with particular re-
ference to ground game, in which a landowner,
on re-entering into possession from his late
sporting tenants, wrote in bitterness of spirit that
‘this fine old estate, with its beautiful forest and
woods, has been eaten up by Raddits, and the mis-
chief done is incalculable and irretrievable,’
Similar examples could be multiplied to a vast
extent. The magnitude of the destruction rabbits

can cause was indicated in the evidence given
294

b6z advd avfoz

SLIPAVY AT GHOVAVG SIVO WAV GIO

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 295

before the Parliamentary Forestry Committee in
1887. Among other witnesses the Earl of Mans-
field’s head-forester described how hares and
rabbits barked elm, ash, and beech trees of 80 to
100 years of age in the Scone woods, standing
upon their hind-legs, and leaving no bark on the
stem up to a height of two feet above the ground.
There is not an estate in the country where the
productiveness of the woodlands can fail to be
injuriously affected if preservation and increase of
game, and particularly of ground game, is one of
the main objects desired by the landowner. And
there never has been an estate where a large head
of game did not mean damage to the woods and
coppices, particularly at the time of regeneration.
On the whole, however, plantations are more liable
to attack than self-sown seedlings or sowings.

In the very earliest times, as the first two
chapters of this volume show, the woods and the
royal forests were mainly used for sport as well as
for providing timber and fuel. This strong love
of sport, and of country life and outdoor amuse-
ments generally, has ever been hereditary, and it
still constitutes one of the greatest attractions in
the possession of landed estates. Nay, there can

296 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

be little doubt that love of sport often saved
many a remnant of the ancient woods, which, but
for that, would probably have been ‘wasted’ or
cleared when the rage was on for clearing wood-
lands, and converting them into arable and pastural
land. Even in the fourteenth century it had
already been found necessary to enclose portions
of the royal forests for their ‘encoppicement’ and
regeneration, to obviate great damage from deer
and ground game; and later on, during James I.’s
reign, the ploughing of the land and the sowing
of acorns was ordered in the New Forest for im-
proving the crop and increasing the number of
oak in the woods. But, even earlier than that,
Tusser had written in his rhyming book on Five
Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1573)—

“IF Cattel, or Cony may enfer fo crop,
Pouns oak is in danger of fosing Bis fop.”

Against such damage, or that done by deer,
trees can be protected by a casing of wire-netting
or by having thorns tied with wire round the lower
part of the stem. But these are methods only
applicable to parks and the ornamental portions
of estates, and are not capable of being carried out
on any extensive scale in the woodlands,

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 297

Where a large head of ground game is main-
tained, careful fencing with wire partly buried in
the ground is the only practical means of keeping
rabbits inside a warren, or of keeping them out of
plantations, and preventing them doing great
damage if they abound in large numbers. But
such fencing soon runs into a lot of money, if
done on any large scale. Where rabbits multiply
greatly, stoats and weasels would soon also mul-
tiply and maintain the balance of nature, were it
not the gamekeeper’s duty to prevent that.

Sport and Forestry are, I hold, by no
means incompatible with each other. The only
proviso is that the preservation of game must
not be on too large a scale if the forests are
intended to be worked commercially. I think
ample proof of this is given in the forests of
France and Germany, those owned by private
landholders as well as those belonging to the
State, where excellent sport is obtained in con-
junction with economic forestry conducted more
scientifically, and with greater financial success,
than in any other countries in the world. But
sport does not necessarily mean rabbits, which the
forester is forced to class as ‘ vermin” when they

298 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

increase greatly in number, as they soon do when
their natural prolificness is left unchecked. The
great Continental forests of Western Europe yield
sport from wild boar, stags, roe-deer, as well as
smaller game, while good mixed shooting is
everywhere obtainable near the edges of the woods.
That Sport and Forestry are compatible is duly
recognised by the State abroad, which determines
the head of big game to be retained and to be
shot annually; and the shooting is often leased
out on easy terms to the head-foresters in charge
of the woods.

In considering the compatibility of Sport and
Forestry, it must be borne in mind that the term
‘sport’ is not subject to any hard and fast, rigid
definition. The idea is subject to modification
from time to time, and even to complete change.
Breech-loading guns and long-range rifles have en-
tirely revolutionised shooting and altered the idea
of a good day’s sport. Nowadays it has come to
be less a question of the interest and enjoyment
afforded by the day’s quest than of the net re-
sult attained. This was recently very amusingly
hit off (with quite another intention, however)
by Punch in the Frenchman’s eager inquiry, ‘Hé

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 299

bien, mon Cher! What Chance? How many
Braces to your Bags?’ In the royal forest of
Wolmer, a sandy tract in Hampshire extending to
about fifteen square miles covered with heath and
fern, now bearing pinewoods in parts, though 120
years ago it stood ‘ without having one standing
tree in the whole extent,’ Gilbert White tells us
how ‘ This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt
for many sorts of wild fowls, which not only
frequent it in the winter, but breed there in the
summer; such as lapwings, snipes, wild ducks,
and, as I have discovered within these few years,
teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good
seasons on the verge of this forest, into which
they love to make excursions: and in particular,
in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, and some
years after, they swarmed to such a degree that
parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty
and sometimes thirty brace in a day. But there
was a nobler species of game in this forest, now
extinct, which I have heard old people say
abounded much before shooting flying became
so common, and that was the heath-cock, black
Lame, or grouse.’

What would the ‘reasonable sportsmen’ of

300 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

those days say to the wholesale slaughter of
hand-fed pheasants and of driven grouse that
now goes on? This may be good Shooting, but
it is not Sport; because it is an essential con-
dition of sport that fair ‘law’ must be given
to the game, and this is not the case in battue-
shooting and grouse-driving.. He was a far
truer sportsman who told Gilbert White how,
when the eighteenth century was still young,
and ‘the beechen woods were much more exten-
sive than at present, the number of wood-
pigeons was astonishing; that he has often
killed near twenty in a day.” Much more con-
sistent, also, with the true idea of sport is the
stalking of deer in the treeless forests of the
Scottish moors; but the Continental method of
walking up, or of first marking down and then
lying in wait for wild boar, red deer, and roe-
bucks in the woods, is a truer form of sport than
that in which successful pursuit of the quarry
is usually dependent on rifles having a con-
siderable range. The stalking of the roebuck
is certainly one of the most enjoyable forms

1 We fear we cannot go the lengths that Dr. Nisbet does in
this matter.—Ebs.

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 301

of woodland sport. To have first-class sport of
this latter kind it is, of course, necessary that
the wooded areas be large and compact, so as
to provide rest and quietness for the different
sorts of big game, and to prevent them from
doing much damage to the agricultural crops
surrounding the woods. It is only under such
circumstances that a stock of wild boar and
red deer can be properly maintained in wood-
lands. After the former had practically been
exterminated in all parts of southern England
except some of the royal forests, General Howe,
early in last century, endeavoured to raise a
fresh stock in Wolmer Forest from wild boars
and sows obtained in Germany; but the agri-
cultural population rose and destroyed them
on account of their depredations. Wild boars,
red deer, and roe certainly all do more or less
damage in woodlands, and particularly the last
two; but the damage is much easier to keep
within due bounds, while still retaining a fair
head of game for true sport, than is the case
with ground game. In some parts of the
country, however, as in the Scone woods in
Perthshire, roe-deer often prove exceedingly de-

302 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

structive, and at times give even more trouble
than rabbits. For large coniferous forests in
the Scottish highlands and on Irish moors
wild boar and deer of sorts, ‘black game’ and
‘red game’ might well be maintained in eco-
nomically-managed forests. There, too, the
comparatively rare and shy capercailzie as well
as the black grouse could be re-introduced on
a large scale, while wood-pigeons and stock-
doves would increase naturally, and furnish
sport of a sort not to be despised by any
true sportsman.

Sporting considerations have assuredly hitherto
been one of the chief causes of the apathy of
landowners towards forestry in this country.
They have certainly been the cause of fre-
quent complaints that woods are unprofit-
able, and that the growing of timber will not
pay as an investment. There seems to me,
however, to be much confusion about this
matter. Landowners who hold this view seem
to have formed their opinions without duly
considering or discriminating between causes and
effects. They do not seem quite to realise that
the difference, often very considerable, between

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 303

what the woodlands might be expected to yield
under economic treatment and what the estate
accounts actually show as receipts, is what their
stock of game costs them to maintain. Nor is
that by any means all that their game-
preserving means in decreased income. Well-
managed copses can be made to give good
pheasant shooting without their annual yield
being appreciably affected, but the case is
different with regard to ground game. Anything
like economic management of woodlands is
certainly incompatible with such a state of
affairs as exists in many of the wooded por-
tions of large estates, where rabbits are per-
mitted to multiply to such an extent that,
when deep snow covers the ground, they cause
wholesale destruction to the coppice in copse-
woods, rendering natural regeneration all but
impossible, killing even large trees by gnawing
away their bark, and making the formation of
new plantations a practical impossibility with-
out considerable expense being incurred in the
erection and maintenance of wire fencing. And
it is usually the more valuable kinds of seed-
lings, stool-shoots, poles, and trees that rabbits -

304 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

destroy, such as oak, ash, sycamore, maple,
beech, and hazel. The soft-barked ash they
attack most of all, and this tree is never at
any age safe from their onslaught during snowy
weather. Often they almost clear the ground
of seedlings and young coppice-shoots in the
open woods, while natural regeneration and
reproduction are vigorous in adjoining patches
protected for experimental observation. Coni-
fers are on the whole less liable to be damaged
than broad-leaved trees owing to the resin they
contain, but larch, spruce, and silver fir are
the most toothsome among them while still
young and smooth in the bark. Pines gene-
rally, and the Corsican pine especially, are less
liable to be attacked than any other trees.

It is questionable, indeed, if many landowners
have ever calculated, in cold blood, and without
any sort of preference or prejudice whatever, the
true debit and credit of their rabbit account. It
would be interesting to know how much the
rabbits actually do cost on many estates in loss
of income from and damage to woodlands, and
in expenditure for wire fencing and maintenance
of rabbit-proof fences. The first cost of wire-

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 305

netting and posts alone comes to sixpence a yard,
and usually more; but even this low estimate
means £22, or 42, 2s. per acre, for fencing even
an absolutely square ten-acre plot. It is, however,
not only in the woods themselves that damage
is done by rabbits. They likewise ravage the
fields surrounding the woodlands, and there, in-
deed, very frequently commit havoc to such an
extent as to affect the rental obtained from the
farming tenants. And even besides this reduction
in the true agricultural value of the land, there is
sometimes a heavy bill to pay for specially severe
damage occasioned in cases where the farmer is
persuaded, or induced, not to avail himself of the
only true means of protection, namely, that which
is afforded by the Ground Game Act, empowering
him to shoot down the rabbits on the land of
which he is the tenant. I know a case in which
a Gloucestershire landowner had to pay £100
a few years ago for damage done to fields round
a wood of 464 acres, although there was no in-
tention of preserving the ground game. Inside
this wood there is much ground ivy, bracken,
blackberries, and other weeds now occupying the
soil which should be producing a good growth
U

306 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

of coppice. If calculation of this sort be made,
and a landowner still prefers swarms of rabbits
to well-stocked woodlands, well and good; the
landowner who can afford to do this nowadays will
have many admirers, while a still larger number
may feel inclined to envy him. With such a pre-
ference for rabbit-shooting, it would be mere
waste of money to attempt economic methods of
Forestry, though otherwise the prices now already
obtainable for well-grown timber, and soon likely
to be much enhanced, also offer attractions not
altogether unworthy of some consideration.

It is rather a difficult matter to furnish any-
thing like a satisfactory estimate of the loss in
yield and income actually caused by rabbits. It
is easier to show how they affect the profitable
working in the one single item of forming the
plantations, leaving supervision, maintenance, and
repairs of damage entirely out of consideration.
Wire-fenced plantations cost up to £8 an acre, and
often more, while they could be formed for less
than half that sum if rabbits were kept down
within reasonable limits. This difference of £4
an acre mounts up, at 3 per cent. interest, to sums

of £173, 4233, 4314, 4423, £573, and £764

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 307

per acre, at 50, 60, 70, 80, go, and 100 years
respectively; and this is of itself no inconsider-
able charge against the rate of profit yielded by the
crop of timber. But, heavy though this item be,
it represents nothing like the monetary equiva-
lent of the actual damage done by the rabbits in
literally eating away the value of the crop.

Often, too, the conditions under which timber
and coppice are sold clash with the possibility of
obtaining the full market value for the produce.
On estates where game preservation is one of the
main objects in view, the forestry work is ex-
pected to be carried out between the end of the
shooting season and the beginning of the nesting
period, so that all thinning, felling, and planting
operations have to be crowded into about six
weeks of February and March, quite regardless of
whether or not that may be the most suitable
time for doing the work. It is not the best time,
but it is the only ‘seasonable’ time from the
gamekeeper’s point of view. As the trees are
felled when getting beyond their dry winter con-
dition (the best time for felling), and as he is
forced to remove the timber immediately, the
buyer will not give as much for it as might other-

308 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

wise easily be obtained; and every penny of differ-
ence this makes per cubic foot aggregates over £4
per thousand cubic feet. This forms, of itself, an
item of over £200 per penny per cubic foot thus
sacrificed on any estate where the annual fall
amounts to a thousand loads. But the buyer has
every inducement to keep to a low offer, as he
knows the timber must either be cleared out of
the woods before nesting time or else it will have
to be kept over for another year, and then
similarly rushed on the market. Again, February
and March are not the proper time for carrying
out thinning operations in young woods—though,
of course, in many of these rabbits render thinning
quite unnecessary, and often, on the contrary,
make blanks that can only be filled up at con-
siderable expense. May and June are the most
suitable months for thinning in the young woods
and plantations, after the late frosts are over for the
year and before the midsummer shoots are flushed.
Planting has also to be hurried on without ade-
quate preparation of the soil; and sowing, often
a very much cheaper way of regenerating a wood-
land crop than planting, is almost out of the
question, because the woods must not be disturbed

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 309

by men delving and trenching during the autumn,
so as to let the earth be acted on by frost and air
in order that the prepared strips or patches may
form a favourable germinating bed for the seed to
be sown on them in spring. And then, after much
trouble and expense have been incurred, when the
wire-fences round young plantations, natural re-
generations, or encoppicements are removed and
the area is thrown open, the danger from ground
game still remains; and one hard winter may
result in damage to such an extent that the
financial success of that particular crop is practi-
cally impossible. To take the case of one estate,
out of about a hundred thousand ash planted
within the last ten years, to reap the advantages
offered by this valuable tree, only a few now re-
main. The soil being suitable, the plants did well
so long as they were left alone, but when rabbits
were allowed to get at them they very soon more
than decimated the promising young crop of ash.
Proof after proof as to the destructiveness of
ground game could be adduced to an overwhelm-
ing extent if it would serve any really practical
purpose. There can be no remedy except con-
stant expenditure to repair damage, and usually

310 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

with most unsatisfactory results; while there can
be no real prevention of damage except by shoot-
ing down the prolific little conies, as has been
done in the case of hares in most parts of Eng-
land, and by keeping them in due check after
that. In comparison with the ravages of ground
game, the damage done by pheasants in scratching
up sowings in nurseries and in woods being regene-
rated naturally, and that wrought by other game-
birds in the forests, is insignificant. This class
of shooting really need not interfere with good
Forestry to any really appreciable extent unless the
various necessary operations in the woods are, as
is now usually the case, prohibited from being
carried out at the seasonable, suitable, and only
proper time for conducting them. Such greater
freedom for the benefit of Forestry would of
course disturb the pheasants, and make them wild
and shy; but it would certainly tend to raise
pheasant shooting once more from the low level
of mere speed and marksmanship up to the higher
position it once occupied as a branch of true sport.
For such purposes copsewoods have special ad-
vantages over highwoods or coppices; and this,
along with other advantages previously indicated,

WOODLANDS, GAME, AND SPORT 311

entitles this typically British form of forestry to
the strongest claim for favourable consideration
as regards future management of woodlands on
a more economic basis than has been customary
in the past. Pheasant shooting in particular can
easily be amply provided for by encouraging the
growth of berry-producing shrubs along the edges
of the rides or green lanes, useful for autumn
game-driving, and necessary in any case for the
proper conduct of forest operations according to
a fixed plan of operations or comprehensive scheme
of management. In large woods special plots
can be reserved and specially treated for phea-
sants by being thrown out of the general scheme
of management.

Certainly, if the woodlands in the British Isles
be extended so as in future to be able to produce
at any rate a larger share of the timber we annu-
ally require in vast and ever-increasing quantity,
and if these be managed on economic and not
on merely arboricultural principles, true sports-
men will be the gainers, for Sport will then be
raised up once more from the rather degraded
position to which it has gradually sunk during
the course of the last fifty or sixty years.

312 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

Since the above was written the article on
Our Game Books, by “C, Stein,” has appeared
in the Fortnightly Review for March last. It is
interesting to note that he, writing from the
sportsman’s point of view, expresses opinions
often very similar to those above expressed on
behalf of Forestry.

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CHAPTER XI
The Improvement of British Forestry

‘TREATED in most cases as coverts, game-
preserves, and pleasure-grounds, neither the Crown
forests nor the private woodlands of Britain can
be expected to give the returns they would yield
under better management. Even in cases where
timber is grown as an investment, the plantations
are as a general rule considerably understocked,
through having been formed at much too wide
distances to begin with, and then thinned when
they were just beginning to remedy by natural
means this initial defect; while not infrequently
the wrong kinds of trees have been selected for
growing to the best advantage on the given land
and in the particular locality. It does not follow

that because good results are obtained in one
313

314. OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

locality, equally good results will be obtainable
from the same tree in quite a different part
of the country. Allowances must be made for
climatic conditions as well as for soil and sub-
soil. In the woods, too, that can be regenerated
naturally, and have thus sown themselves time
after time for centuries past, overthinning has
likewise been habitual. In great measure due,
no doubt, to almost immemorial custom for the
browsing of deer and the formation of coverts
and thickets for game of all sorts in past days,
this too free use of the axe in immature woods
was also more recently meant to hasten on the
increase of the trees in girth, thus overlooking
the fact that the chief profit in timber-growing
depends far less on the sum obtainable for a
comparatively small number of large trees than
on the sum total per acre obtainable for the
whole crop of wood of marketable size. The
direct consequence of this arboricultural treat-
ment has, of course, been the development of
a large crown and big branches. This, though
adding to the beauty of the tree as a natural
object, distinctly decreases what would otherwise
be its market value as so many cubic feet of

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 315

timber. And then, too, many of these fine trees,
spreading their huge limbs far around them, have
often, from one reason or another, been allowed
to remain standing long after they have attained
their maturity. This is especially the case
with many of the beautiful old oak trees in
copses which have often been rendered almost
useless by old age and over-maturity, but which
as objects of picturesque beauty possess a value
that can well outweigh any financial considera-
tions with a wealthy landowner when such
woods are in the immediate vicinity of his man-
sion. Even when trees are grown for profit,
however, the mistake has sometimes been made
of allowing the crop to stand after it has attained
its full maturity, and when its further retention
has really meant not only loss of interest on the
capital in timber, but also actual loss, to a greater
or less extent, of capital in the capacity of the
soil for the production of wood. While old
trees and fully-matured crops of this sort are
allowed to remain growing, instead of being
cleared and utilised, they are both unprofitable
in themselves, and they also prevent a younger
and more vigorous crop of wood being grown

316 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

on the land they occupy. And thus it comes
that, except on a very few estates, the woodlands
are not being worked in the manner which would
give the best financial results.

That our woodlands, aggregating a little over
three million acres, and mostly owned by private
landholders, are not in the best condition possible,
has long been a well-known fact. Fifteen years
ago a Parliamentary Committee was appointed
to consider the position of Forestry in Britain.
After investigating the subject thoroughly for
about two years, they reported that ‘whilst on
public and national grounds timber cultivation
on a more scientific system should be encouraged,
landowners might make their woods more re-
munerative were greater attention paid to the
selection of trees suitable to different soils and
to more skilful management after the trees are
planted.’ This, of itself, was but the reiteration
of the concensus of opinion and of the general feel-
ing on the subject to which expression had already
been given in appointing a Committee to investi-
gate and report on the matter. Certain specific
recommendations were, however, also made as re-
gards the State providing instruction in Forestry,

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 317

but these have not borne the fruit they might
have done, and the proposals then made are now
almost out of date. Although ‘more skilful
management” was recommended, nothing ade-
quate has yet been done to supply the instruction
which may develop the skill; for a knowledge
of Forestry no more comes by intuition than does
skill in Medicine. One can easily, as with drugs,
find out what has bad effects, but the correct
and beneficial treatment can only be arrived at
by sound theoretical instruction, careful, intelli-
gent study, and practical experience and observa-
tion of results under different local conditions.
If any young landowner, or prospective land-
owner, or any student of land agency wish to
obtain a thorough training in Forestry and the
cognate sciences, there is as yet no institution
in the British Isles at which he can obtain the
same except at an expenditure in time and money
far beyond the means of most of those who
might be desirous of thus studying Forestry as
it is studied in almost every other country in
Europe. And the practical result of want of
opportunities of this sort is that the woodlands
we have, even when managed mainly on what

318 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

are considered business principles, are nothing
like so well stocked or so remunerative as they
otherwise would be.

A singular and very convincing proof of this
was given at the recent discussion on Forest
Management at the Surveyors’ Institution, when
Mr. Daniel Watney, the well-known authority
and expert on British timber, remarked that—

‘In a paper read by Professor Fisher of Cooper’s Hill before
the Dublin Royal Society, it was estimated that there were
4,000,000 acres in Great Britain and 2,000,000 acres in Ireland
which were available for planting, and, as he gathered from
the report he had seen of the paper, these 6,000,000 acres
were expected to be capable of yielding 75 cubic feet per
acre per annum. He could not quite understand this, for
if these 75 cubic feet were put at the price of 6d. a foot even,
the yield would be 37s. 6d. per acre per annum.’

The best continuous annual returns known to
him, Mr. Watney continued, were those of
30s. an acre yielded by beechwoods in Bucking-
hamshire (see page 138). Yet I venture to say
that an anticipation of 75 cubic feet per acre
is quite justifiable as an average annual yield.
Often much over 100 cubic feet in actual solid
contents,—and therefore still considerably in ex-
cess of 75 cubic feet, even if all be reduced to

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 319

correspond with the customary British (square-
of-quarter-girth) measurement, which makes an
allowance of 214 per cent. for wastage in con-
version—is not an unusual yield for conifer crops
(larch, pine, and fir, each of them) on good soil.
Indeed, this quantity is often far exceeded on
good forest land in Germany. And, as we have
equally good soil and a climate rather better than
that of Continental Europe for the growth of
timber in general, it must be due either to want
of technical knowledge, or to insistence on wrong
methods, or to some combination of both of
these causes, that our coniferous timber crops do
not, within Mr. Watney’s extensive experience,
give so good a yield as is common throughout
Germany. This may be seen from the data
already given in chap. ix for Hanover, but simi-
lar data collected in other parts of Germany and
tabulated for local use, all show that this result
is attainable under good economic management.
That such is the case may be seen at a glance
from the Tables of Average Yield per acre for
the kingdom of Saxony given below. But I
must first apologise for thus again bringing for-
ward German Forestry statistics in default of any

320 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

being as yet available for Britain. In doing so,
I would merely echo the words of the Earl of
Rosebery (in connection with quite another matter)
on 23rd January last: ‘I say this, that we are a
people of enormous waste. We waste simply
by not pursuing scientific methods. I do not
like to compare us with Germany; but, at any
rate, we may be certain of this, taking Germany
as an example of the opposite method of treat-
ment, Germany is infinitely more painstaking in
her methods than we are. But without taking
as a model Germany or any other country .. .
we must become more scientific in our methods.’

By means of such statistical tables, based on
the average of thousands of crops of timber, and
compiled locally for special use in different parts
of the German Empire, the returns which should
be given can be forecast if the quality of the soil
and situation are known; or the latter can easily
be determined by the actual amount of wood
yielded on felling a mature timber crop that has
been properly managed. One particular lesson
that can obviously be drawn from them is the
great advantage to be obtained by suiting the
kind of crop to the soil and situation rather

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 323

Table of Average Yield per acre for Highwoods in the Kingdom
of Saxony (including all wood, except stumps and roots).

Tota, AverAcE VoLtume (TIMBER AND SMALLWoop) IN Cusic FEET, ALL OF IT (IN-
CLUDING EVEN SMALLWOOD) BEING REDUCED TO CusTOMARY BRITISH MEASURE-
MENT (SQUARE-OF-QUARTER-GIRTH, OR ONLY 79% °/, OF ACTUAL Cusic ConTENTS).

Quality of Soil and Situation for the given kind of tree.

Age
ind of i i

eee ves Vv Average Average Ve Average
, Good Annual |Moderate,| Annual Pott, Annual
cod. | Growth. Growth. * | Growth,
Cub. ft. Cub. ft. Cub. ft.

Oak. 60 | 2,622 44 1,714 28 640 10

80 | 3,997 50 | «2,567 32 940 12

100 5,500 55 3.455 34 1,400 14
120 | 7,070 59 45329 30 1,422 12
140 8,555 61 5,150 36 1,611 Ir

BEECH. 60 | 3,152 52 1,927 32 632 10

80 | 4,945 62 2,954 37 916 II
I00 6,770 68 3,973 39 1,179 11
120 8,358 qo 4,811 40 1,343 IL
140 | 9,677 69 51466 39 1,445 Io

Scots PINE. 20 1,185 59 734 36 244 12
(Corsican Pine | 40 | 3,412 85 1,990 49 584 14
should give a 60 5,703 95 3,286 54 924 15

larger yield.) 80 7,702 96 4,424 54 1,224 15
Too | 9,290 93 51317 53 1,469 14

LARCH. 20 1,493 75 goo 45 284 14
(Japanese Larch} 40 3,823 95 2,204 55 624, 15
will probably 60 6,162 103 3,476 58 924 15

give onlya | 80 8,050 100 4,526 56 1,185 14
smaller yield.) | x00 9,574 95 55372 53 1,390 14,

SPRUCE, 20 1,129 56 734 36 260 13
(Douglas Firand| 40 3,491 87 2,054 Sx 608 15
Menzies Spruce | 60 | 6,359 | 106 3,578 59 940 15

should give a 80 ‘9,235 115 5,103 64 1,240 15
larger yield.) | 100 | 11,778 117 6,422 64 1,502 1s

than by trying to grow the kind of tree that
commands the best price per cubic foot at the

moment. Thus, what is classifiable as ‘poor’
x

322 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

land for oak or beech may be ‘ moderate’ or even
‘good’ land for pine, and would consequently
in all likelihood give far better ultimate returns
if thus cropped than by utilising it for the growth
of hardwoods. And, in either case, an admixture
of larch, on land suitable for its growth, will both
improve the woods and add to their monetary re-
turns. Suitability of soil and situation should
therefore be the first consideration in determining
the specific nature of the crop, if the timber it
will yield is at all marketable locally; because,
while the growth is most energetic, the quality of
the wood produced is at the same time better for
general purposes, and its market value is conse-
quently greater.

These tables also show how conifer crops have
the power of almost trebling the capital in wood
during the period of greatest activity in upward
growth between twenty and forty years of age, a
point which has been previously remarked on.
But, obviously, in order that the gross capital
in wood may accumulate rapidly, and that the
advantages of a regularly-sustained annual yield
may be gained, it is necessary that the formation
of timber crops, including plantations on land again

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 323

being brought under wood after agricultural or
pastural occupation, or after having been ‘wasted’
and allowed to revert into wild moors or bogs,
should be continuous year after year. Without
continuity the best results are not obtainable, for
the capital in timber cannot then be adjusted and
distributed over the area to the greatest advantage.
It is only by regular annual continuity in forming
plantations that the requisite capital in timber
for large woods can be gradually built up—and
this, owing to the rapidity of growth during
the pole-forest period of young woods in close
canopy, at a far less actual outlay than such
capital, when fully provided and properly dis-
tributed, is really worth in monetary value esti-
mated on its capacity for yielding annual returns.
At the same time a by no means inconsiderable
‘unearned increment’ takes place in the capital
value of the land bearing well-managed wood-
land crops, as the dead foliage of thick woods
of normal density improves the land by forming
humus or mould. This directly increases the
productive capacity of the soil, and consequently
raises its monetary value as judged by the prac-
tical standard of fertility. And a fact worth

324 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

noting in this connection is that, on land again
being brought under wood long after its original
clearance, the capital in timber can often be built
up and accumulated more completely and at the
least expenditure in money, though not in time,
by means of sowing in place of planting; while
sowings, which come up thickly, will always
yield earlier and considerably larger thinnings
than plantations, unless these should happen to
have been made very closely, and at a cost almost
prohibitive in Britain. The 4840 plants required
per acre for planting at 3 feet by 3 feet will, even
if smaller plants be used, cost more when set in
the ground than the 2722 required for setting
out at 4 feet by 4 feet. But, in well-managed
woods of twenty years of age, after the first
thinnings have been made, the number of poles
really required to form close cover with proper
utilisation of the soil usually exceeds considerably
the whole initial number of plants with which
plantations are generally formed in Britain. The
influence of this is felt not only as regards the
actual capital in timber, but also as to the income
subsequently yielded by the woods.

The consideration of these various matters will

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 325

show that, for really economical treatment of
woodlands, a well-considered Working Plan or
Scheme of Management is necessary in the case
of estates having any considerable acreage under
timber. The idea of having Working Plans of
this sort for the woodland portions of large
estates in Britain is as yet comparatively new,
and it is consequently not yet generally approved.
The necessity for having any regular Scheme of
Management, to be adhered to year after year
so far as possible, is not yet quite understood ;
hence it is suspected that its provisions would
more probably hamper than assist towards the
better management of the estate. This objection,
however, overlooks the fact that the object of
a Working Plan is that any landowner who
wishes to grow crops of timber in a commercial -
manner may have the forest work on his estate
arranged so as to give effect to his wishes in
the best and most profitable manner. It aims
at effecting improvements wherever necessary in
the treatment of the existing woodlands, and it
makes such suggestions with regard to the for-
mation of new crops as may lead to the land
being utilised to the best advantage. By group-

326 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

ing the different woods into blocks, by consider-
ing and fixing the best periods of rotation, and
by judicious allocation of the annual thinnings
and falls of timber and of coppice, the Scheme.
of Management will strive to realise, as fully
as is practicable, the desire of the landowner,
and to obtain for him the largest returns which
the land can be made to yield in the shape of
a regular yield sustained year after year. Even
details have to be fully considered, as, for ex-
ample, providing edge-shelter or wind-mantles of
thickly-foliaged evergreen trees along all the sides
of woods exposed to the deteriorating influence
of heavy winds. In various other minor matters
there is also room for improvement. Thus,
timber is often sold standing, and the buyer
carries out the felling. Even if the latter employ
the woodmen on the estate to do this, as is often
the case, the work is not likely to be so carefully
performed, or the damage to underwood or young
growth minimised so effectively, as if the opera-
tion were conducted directly for the proprietor,
and by his own men working under the personal
supervision of the wood-reeve. This seems to be
an old method surviving from ages ago. Even

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 327

in Evelyn’s time its drawbacks were recognised,
as when he says of the oak, ‘A Timber-tree is a
Merchant Adventurer, you shall never know what
he is worth, till he be dead.’

Most British woods are unfortunately in such
a condition that Schemes of Management drawn
up for them will not at once lead to more pro-
fitable returns being obtained from the woods
than hitherto, because in the vast majority of
cases the capital in timber is not adjusted and
distributed economically over the woodland area.
Often, indeed, additional expenditure will have
to be urged for the filling of blank spaces in thin
crops, and thinnings will usually have to be re-
stricted considerably in comparison with what has
been hitherto customary under the arboricultural
method of treatment. But these are the results
of uneconomical management in the past: they
are not faults inherent in the scientific Working
Plan. Hence it will often happen that the bene-
fits of a Working Plan will not become apparent
till such proper adjustment and distribution of
the capital in wood has taken place, and till the
various crops have been brought into such density
of cover and general economic condition as may

328 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

be essential for subsequently obtaining the largest
annual yield capable of being regularly sustained.
Until this is achieved, the effect of a sound Scheme
of Management can only be in the first instance to
gradually increase the capital in timber, and con-
sequently the capital value of the woods, till that
is properly distributed over the area. But, it has
been said in objection to such Schemes, the estate
may change hands from time to time, timber has
to be felled to meet the death dues, and then
what becomes of all the fine arrangements of the
Working Plan? Of course, if the woodlands are
to provide the money, the Scheme of Manage-
ment cannot then be carried out in its original
form. It is almost certain, however,—indeed, it
stands to reason—that woods being managed
under a well-considered scheme are much more
likely to be able, without permanent damage
resulting therefrom, to provide for such a con-
tingency than woods worked almost in a hap-
hazard way. Larger fellings might, for example,
be made in the almost mature woods with
diminution of subsequent falls for some years till
this premature eating away of some of the capital
be made good again by savings; so that, if the

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 329

woods are as a rule to be looked to for provid-
ing payment of death dues, this seems rather an
argument for economic management than a valid
argument against it.

Another objection that has been raised is that
Working Plans may be all very well for State
forests, but they are not so suitable for private
estates. This objection, likewise, rests on the
misconception that on the Continent the great
bulk of the forests is the property of the State.
Such is not the case. All the private woodlands
in Germany are managed in accordance with de-
finite, carefully-prepared Working Plans, and
some of the great landowners like Fuerst Stoll-
berg-Wernigerode on the Harz Mountains, main-
tain quite a large establishment of highly-trained
and well-paid forest officials. That success is a
mere question of management, and not of the
total amount of woodland area, is proved, if
specific proof were needed, by the fact that the
Belgian forests, aggregating 1,750,000 acres, give
a return of four million pounds sterling a year.
Now, if our 3,000,000 acres of woods and forests
were equally profitable, they would bring in an
annual income of nearly seven million pounds.

330 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

Nothing like these results can, however, be ob-
tained unless the woodlands be subjected to well-
considered management in the manner above
indicated. During the last year or two steps
in this direction have been taken by the Com-
missioners of Woods and Forests for some of
the Crown lands, and by a few of the large
landowners in Britain, who recognise the solid
advantages that economical treatment promises,
more especially with indications already present
of considerable enhancement in the market value
of clean, well-grown timber. And, as regards
the Crown forests, no doubt larger areas would
already be subjected to improved treatment but
for the circumstance that in many ways the hands
of the Commissioners and of their Deputy-Sur-
veyors are tied by Acts of Parliament against the
clearing of over-mature timber and the enclosure
of portions for regeneration or planting, so that
they are unable to carry out the various improve-
ment schemes which they know to be very desir-
able. As an example of this, the Honourable
Gerald Lascelles, Deputy-Surveyor of the New
Forest, in 1887 gave evidence before the Forestry
Committee to the effect that more than 40,000

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 331

acres of the forest land had been lying waste there
simply because two clauses of the Act of 1877
prohibited clearing and planting being done.

One peculiar feature of Forestry in Britain
has previously been remarked on (p. 269), namely,
that landowners have hitherto usually entered
on an investment of this permanent nature with-
out obtaining such professional advice as they
would, as a matter of course, seek in invest-
ments of any other nature. And a further
development of this same national peculiarity,
this ‘waste simply by not pursuing scientific
methods,’ as Lord Rosebery put it, this neglect
of the business side of Forestry, is that the men
placed in charge of the woods, besides having
as yet no opportunity of obtaining sound and
comprehensive technical instruction, practical as
well as theoretical, are enormously underpaid
considering the responsibilities some of them
must have. Take, for example, a case men-
tioned recently at the Surveyors’ Institution, in
which one landowner in particular, who is getting
more than a thousand pounds a year out of his
woods, pays his forester 15s. a week! Now, at
3 per cent. this income would indicate a capital

332. OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

of £33,333 in timber; and to expect to have
this large capital administered to the best advan-
tage,—with probably fine scope for increasing
the capital by skilful management, and thereby
likewise increasing the annual income yielded by
it,—for the sum of £39, 7s. 6d. a year paid as
wages to the wood-reeve, does not seem quite
in proper proportion to the nature of the services
desired of him.

It can hardly be denied that British land-
owners, as a class, are decidedly apathetic with
regard to Forestry. So far as game preserv-
ing is antagonistic to good management of
the woodlands, that matter has been fully dealt
with in the last chapter. Other three causes,
perhaps in some cases equally powerful in this
direction, are want of funds, want of encour-
agement offered by the State to induce land-
owners to plant waste land, and danger of fires
along railway lines. One great opportunity for
State encouragement of economic Forestry was
lost a year or two ago, when the Congested
Districts Act for the Highlands was passed
without favourable consideration having been
given to the recommendations made on this

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 333

particular matter, as well as on planting along
the west coast of Ireland, by the Forestry
Committee of 1887.

As most landowners have merely a life-interest
in their estates, and as the calls on their purse
are many (beginning with the heavy demand on
succession), they have not as a rule much money
to spare for forming plantations which are only
likely to yield substantial returns after their
individual tenure of the estate is at an end.
Hence, even if he be convinced of the desira-
bility of growing crops of timber for future
profit, the landowner seldom has the funds
necessary to make an investment of this sort.
As State aid has not thus been directly given
to Agriculture during the last twenty-five years
of depression, it is impracticable that advances
should be made from the Treasury to land-
owners desirous of planting waste land and
tracts thrown out of arable or pastural occu-
pation. But substantial assistance and encour-
agement might be given indirectly by amendments
to the Lands Improvement, the Settled Estates,
and the Board of Agriculture Acts. Under
the Improvement of Lands Act, 1899, the

334. OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

Board of Agriculture may extend the period
of charge for loans obtained for planting, for
shelter, or for any beneficial purposes which will
increase the permanent value of the land, up to
forty years; and the rent charge made by the
Scottish Drainage and Improvement Company to
repay capital and interest within that maximum
period is 44, 11s. 6d. per cent. per annum,
payable half-yearly, for advances of £300 or
upwards. This assistance hardly goes far enough
to induce impecunious landowners to form eco-
nomic woodlands on any large scale. For at
least ten years, and often for twenty years, in
some parts of the country, there would be no
returns at all, or next to none, from the young
woods. All would be outlay. And besides that,
there is hardly any highwood crop which can be
considered to have reached its financial maturity
at forty years of age; hence, for timber crops,
the maximum period of the loan might safely
be extended so as to lighten the burden during
the first ten or twenty years on the landowner
desirous of making such an investment for the
benefit of his sons or grandsons, and indirectly
for the good of the country in general.

IMPROVED BRITISH FORESTRY 335

The second of the three causes is the minor
matter of the rating of woodlands. Formerly,
before the duty was taken off foreign imports
of timber, the British woodlands paid no rating.
The law regarding the rating of woods is that
the value of the land shall be taken at what the
soil might be worth in its unimproved condition
as agricultural land; but, in practice, a much
higher assessment is often made on what is more
or less of an agricultural basis. In one instance,
in the case of woods on an estate in Gloucester-
shire about thirteen years ago, the assessment was
submitted to arbitration, with the result that it
was reduced from £1591 to £916, accepted by
the complainer; yet the arbitrator recorded his
opinion that the reduced assessment was still
too high. Even if the rating were altogether
abolished, the loss would not be much felt by
the Treasury in view of the vastly greater
benefits that would accrue to the country by
growing timber and affording more employment
to the rural population. Or, at any rate, the pay-
ment of the rates might be made deferable till the
crops are mature and about to be felled and utilised.

A third cause, especially important in conifer

336 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS

tracts, is perhaps that though the owners of traction
engines or road locomotives are liable for damage
caused to fields or plantations by fires ignited
through their sparks, yet railway companies (con-
sequent on a legal decision in 1894) have no such
liability at present.

The weak points of British Forestry are now
much better known, and are more generally
acknowledged, than was the case but a few years
ago. And the best remedies are plain. These
consist in improved technical instruction, both
theoretical and practical, so as to provide well-
trained, skilful wood-managers and wood-reeves
for the better management of existing woodlands,
and in greater encouragement and assistance to
be given by the State to landowners than have yet
been extended to them, to induce them to form
plantations on poor land and ‘ waste’ tracts once
under woods. Given these, there can be little
doubt that the good prospects of the timber
market of the near future would soon lead to
considerable improvements in British Forestry,
without appreciably affecting the maintenance of
a reasonable head of game of all the better sorts
to satisfy the true sporting tastes of that best
of men, the English Country Gentleman.

INDEX

AFFORESTATION, 15, 20, 22,
23, 255 51

Agistors, 43

Aik, 95

Alder, 104, 158, 174, 261

Ancient forests, 3, 10, 15, 69, 74

Arboriculture, 81, 129, 270,
314

Articles anent the Charters, 46

Ash, 99, 104, I12, 141, 152, 168,
173) 239, 287, 303

——., diseases of, 156, 287

Aspen, 182, 185

Assart, 35

BARK, oak, 99, 103, 120, 273,
290

Bark-beetles, 218

Beech, 104, 238, 243, 303

—— underwood, 112

—— woods, I15, 130, 261, 270,
321

Birch, 179, 185

British Forestry, 82, 93, 107,
119, 198, 254, 277, 287, 311,
316, 327, 336

CANUTE’S Charter, 9, 12, 17,
25

337

Capital in woodland crops,
263

Chalmers’s ‘ Caledonia,’ 70

Charta de Foresta, 18, 25, 34,
38, 45, 49

Chase, 26

Cherry plum, 247

Chestnut, Sweet or Spanish,
165

——, Horse, 188, 238

Clearance, gradual, 144

——,, partial, 109, 111

Cobbett, 123, 131, 152, 160,
201

Coppice, 99, 102, 125, 128,
140, 157, 163, 167, 261, 272,
321

Copse, 99, 128, 229, 232, 261,
272, 274, 280, 310, 321

Court of Attachment, 29, 41,

Crown of foliage, 110, 215,
279

DETERIORATION of soil, 259
Disafforestation, 20, 25
Domesday Book, 8, 10, 12,
15
Douglas fir, 207, 220, 321
Drift of forests, 51
Y

338

ELM, 99, 104, 112, 147, 238

Ettrick Forest, 71

Evelyn’s ‘Sylva? Preface v,
53, 76, 77, 80, 92, 132, 150s
153, 159, 174, 176, 180, 189,
198, 206, 225, 244

Expeditation of mastiffs, 42

FINANCIAL maturity, 114, 128,
155, 165, 261

Fitzherbert, 55

Forest, 26, 65

— laws, English, 9, 11, 18,

anew)

» Scottish, 57, 58

—— Oath of Allegiance, 33

— Ordinance, 47

Foresters, 37, 332

Forestry, 81, 85, 1375 199, 259,
267, 270, 272

Forests, Act of Limitation of,
73

, ancient, 3, 10, 15
‘Fumifugium,’ 53

GILPIN, 131, 160
Girdling, 122

HAMPTON Court, 51, 96

Hardwoods, 147, 261

Hawthorn, 245

Hazel, 112, 172, 303

Hedgerow trees, 99, 148

Hedges, 235

Highwoods, 255, 260, 274

Holinshed’s ‘Description of

' England,’ 52, 54, 90, 94, 131,
156, 176, 200

INDEX

Holly, 244
Hornbeam, 170, 238, 243

INE’ laws, 9, 12
Irish forests, 58, 72
Iter, 27, 51

JACOBEAN laws, 57, 66
Justice in Eyre, 27, 51, 73
—— Seat, 30

LAMING of Dogs, 42

Larch, 109, 141, 167, 184, 203,
208, 220, 225, 230, 232, 280,
321

——,, diseases of, 187, 227

——,, Japanese, 233, 321

Law of Entail, 273

Lawson’s ‘New Orchard and
Garden,’ 93

Layering, 113, 193

Leaf canopy, 110, 215, 279

Lespegend, 13

Lime, 187

MANAGEMENT,
325

Maple, 104, 112, 158, 168, 303

May, 245

Menzies or Sitka spruce, 220,
321

Modern forests, 81

Mould, 142, 272, 323

Scheme of,

NATURAL regeneration, 115
I4I, 145, 216, 314
New Forest, 10, 15, 100

INDEX

Norman laws, 9, 13
Norway spruce, 220, 261, 321
Nurses, 234

Oak for navy, 78, III, 239

—— timber, 105, 109

Oakwoods, 87, 167, 261, 303,
321

Osier-holts, 256, 273, 291

Osiers, 291

PARK, 26

Pine, Austrian, 209, 212

——,, Corsican, 202, 209, 211,
233, 304, 321

——,, diseases of, 187, 219

» Scots, 185, 200, 209, 233,
261, 321

—— weevil, 217

Pinewoods, 167, 184, 213

Plantations, 53, 72

Planting, 218, 229, 278, 323, 324

Plashing, 253, 289

Pletching, 253

Poegend, 13

Pollarding, 55, 154

Poplars, 182, 188, 191

Pourallee, 24

Preparatory felling, 142

Pruning, 93

Purlieu, 24

Purprestre, 35

QUICK, 245

RaBBITS, damage done by,

IOI, 157, 211, 294
Rate of growth, 119, 261, 321

3359

Regard, 36

Regarders, 40

Robinia, 170, 240

Romans, trees introduced by,
6, 147, 166

SALLOW, Saugh, 189

Saxon laws, 7, 9, 12

Scotale, 39

Scottish forests, 56, 65

Seed felling, 143

Shelter-belts, 225

Shrew ash, 154

Silver fir, 206

Skene’s ‘ Celtic Scotland, 56

—‘Regiam Majestatem,’
59

Softwoods, 145, 174, 261

Soil preparation, 115, 143

Stag-headedness, 108, 157

Standards, 100, 229, 283

Stoles or suckers, 148, 157,
166, 183, 193

Stool-shoots, 102, 112, 140,157,
163, 166, 183

Swainmote, 29

Sycamore, 104, 112, 159, 168,

303

TEAK timber, imports of, 79

Thinnings, 98, 109, 111, 145,
279, 290, 314

Timber imports, 81

Tinemen, 13

Tusser’s ‘Good Husbandrie,’
296

UNDERWOOD, I12, 157, 163,
167, 255, 282

340

VERDERERS, 37
Vert and venison, 28, 48

WaRREN, 28

Waste, 35, 70

White’s ‘Natural History of
Selborne,’ 96, 154, 243, 299,

300

Wild birds, protection of, 67,
204

Willows, 188, 191

Wind, 111, 203

INDEX

Wind-mantles, 225

Woods, British, 6

Woods and Forests, Com-
missioners of, 75, 330

Woodmote, 29

Woodward, 43

Working plan, 325

YEW, 205

Yield in timber, &c., 119, 138,
146, 161, 203, 222, 229, 261,
318

THE END

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