There is, and always will be, a great demand for foreign timber, and under present circumstances home timber cannot compete with it. This is because the foreign timber is fully matured and has grown under favourable conditions, unlike our own, which has either been felled in its infancy or after maturity has been passed. The timber merchant knows well that our ordinary home-grown produce is unfitted for many important purposes, and buys chiefly to meet a local demand, or for the few well-defined purposes which it is fitted for. If the foreign supplies were to cease we could not find in our woods the class of timber which is needed. To some extent this may be met by the spread of the true principles of forestry, but under the most approved rules and principles we cannot expect perfection. The chief reason is that private individuals cannot be expected to allow their trees to reach a perfect growth. States alone can achieve this. Under no circumstances, therefore, can we become a timber-growing nation, but we may, nevertheless, do much to improve both the quality and quantity of our timber supply. The matter rests with the landowners, and until they recognise this the teaching of forestry will avail but little.

There is one link almost entirely missing in our system, and that is the natural reproduction of trees. True, in many cases blanks become filled up by the germination and growth of self-deposited seeds, but this natural planting meets with no encouragement. In France and Germany it is the keystone of the success which they so justly enjoy. This power of natural reproduction is not simply permitted, it is encouraged and promoted, so that there is a regular rotation of a set period. This natural power is, of course, aided where necessary by planting, and temporary nurseries are made

in the various blocks to which the forester has access for this purpose. It is, of course, impossible in one short chapter to do more than draw attention to the advantages to be gained by this procedure, but the subject is important, and much will be gained by a close study of the French and German methods.

As an instance of this we may point to the fact that many of the new plantations of Scotch pine upon our poor heath-lands have proved total or partial failures; and yet on the lee-side of old plantations upon the same class of land the seeds which have been blown over germinate and grow freely. Thus nature will often perform successfully what to the forester is impossible.

So long as the love of field sports and the love of sylvan and rural beauty are inherent in us, so long will the presence of trees be a necessity, and the landowner who plants wisely will do more to increase the capital value of his estate than he who expends large sums on doubtful agricultural improvements.

CHARLES E. CURTIS.

"YE fair ancestral trees, so great and good!" Alas, that the pious sentiment of the Elizabethan should have become out of date in the Victorian era. For what in the range of phenomena equals in majesty and grace these princes of the vegetable kingdom? The Tubney Elm, the twin Caroline giants in the grove of Magdalen, the King's Acre Elm in Herefordshire, the hollow Oak of Scot's Common on the Chilterns-not to omit the Burnham Beeches, the Boscobel Oak, and the exquisite beeches hard by Rufus' Stone in the New Forest; surely these, and such as these, should inspire reverence! What would Chevening be if divested of the glory of its gnarled and knotted yews, whose birthday might perhaps be referred to the Norman period? Rob Oxford of her Christ Church Walk-that superb avenueCambridge of the leafy softness that lends such supreme grace to her "Backs," and these alma matres of ours would sink to the level of commonplace. And if what are termed ornamental trees be admittedly treasures, why not the wold, the wood, the shawe-I decline to employ that silliest of hunting cant, the modern word, spinny? One can hardly realise the complexion of

that mind which can acquire gratification from the destruction of a tree, a divine work of art, built slowly, like Cologne Cathedral, in the long course of centuries. Granted that people exist to whom destructiveness is the keenest luxury. I have heard a Kentish rustic declare that he never enjoyed anything so much as killing a fat bullock, and a gentleman farmer admit that he preserved rabbits, not for their value, but for the pleasure (sic) of shooting them. To those capable of appreciating the untold value of the mighty gift of life, such sentiments must appear astounding; scarcely more so, however, than the corresponding craze for felling trees, those things of beauty which an hour may lay low, but which half a century alone can raise to maturity; which, if allowed their few feet of soil, would gladden the eyes of generations yet unborn. To my mind, nothing seems so sorrowful as the downfall of a noble tree. It suggests the largest argument in favour of pessimism; a cruel kismet; omnia vanitas!—the ultimate triumph of evil; the death of the beautiful, and of hope.

Old England, the merry England of our ancestors, must have been a paradise of greenery. In Pendale, where now vast forests of chimneys belch forth eternal filth, there ranged for miles a noble forest. Shakespeare, with his particular penchant for poaching, may have tracked the fallow deer-those red brutes had not then been invented-over the glades, all green and gold, of the Broomy hamlet, now metamorphosed into Birmingham. One is ready, perhaps, to admit that the transformation of Arcadia into Ironopolis may be a natural and inevitable evolution, and if in the fulness of time it should be the destiny of the whole country to be merged in the City of London, it would be wisdom to accept such a conclusion as resulting from the progressive multiplication of the

species. Not having come to that yet, England being neither all Pendale and Birmingham, nor absorbed totally in the kingdom of Cockaigne, one may be allowed to break a lance in favour of the poor trees. An illustrious statesman occupies, unfortunately, the opposite pole, and would seem by his example to have sanctioned the abuse of the axe. Politics, however, do not enter into the argument, for the sin of tree-slaughter lies also at the door of Mr. Gladstone's political adversaries, who, frankly, ought to have known better.

In short, this age has been one of wanton disregard for the divine right of trees. Agricultural depression, followed by a heavy drop in rents, has compelled many a squire-doubtless often with a pang of honourable remorse to sacrifice the beauty of his estate. High farming too has made itself responsible for a crusade against growing timber, and impoverished landlords of late have bowed submissively to each and all of their tenants' irrational demands. To crown all, a Conservative Government-proh pudor!-forced through Parliament a bill for the demolition of hedges. I say demolition, since the levelling of hedges to two feet has utterly ruined the hawthorn stocks, besides wrecking the picturesque loveliness of our old English lanes. A more shameful piece of tyranny than that bill never was enacted, its sole motive being to render hunting easier for three-legged quadrupeds and incompetent horsemen.

Between them they have done their utmost to debase the incomparable landscapes of our native land. This, however, in an age of utility will appear a very venial offence, since it treads on the corns only of poets, painters, and such feeble folk. We will therefore shift our ground, and inquire whether the reduction of our national timber-crop-to put it in the vulgarest of terms