after day, an old man potters, preparing her to withstand the shocks and blows of the next "Norther" to which she will be exposed. He has but little time for speech, for he is ever too busy to waste time in idle words. It seems strange that the old Osiris has not long ago been broken up, for in her frame is much old iron and copper, and corporations are, at best, but soulless things. But if curiosity tempts you to make inquiry concerning her, you will be told that, as long as the old man lives, she is not to be disturbed. If you question further concerning the old hulk and her white-haired guardian, you will hear a tale of the greatest storm that the Lakes have ever known. And the hero of that tale will be the old man - Dalton of the Osiris.

Two hundred and fifty years ago forestry was one of the most important branches of rural economy in England, and had long been engaging the serious attention of Parliament. For over a hundred years previously various Acts had been passed to try and encourage, or even enforce, the growing of oak on the largest possible scale for the maintenance and increase of shipbuilding timber. During Henry VIII.'s reign, in 1543, the Statute of Woods had been passed on account of "the great decay of timber and woods," which ordered the enclosure and fencing of coppicewoods and the storing of standard trees as an over-wood to grow into timber. Wherever there was a sufficient number, "twelve standils or storers of oak were to be left per acre to grow up into the future timber - trees; but in default thereof, elm, ash, aspen, or beech were to be selected and kept to make up the due number, these being the timbertrees coming next in value after the oak. Elm was at that time largely used for water-conduit pipes and betterclass furniture, and ash for agricultural implements and carriages, while aspen was (along with the tougher and harder wood of the small service-tree and the whitebeam) one of the best arrow-woods for the English archers, and beech was used both for the commoner kinds of furniture,

as is still the case in the chair factories of Bucks, and for domestic fuel.

In spite of heavy penalties, this great compulsory Act, framed to prevent the further wastage of woods, although permitting the proper use of woodland produce for domestic and agricultural needs, was unable to effect the object in view. In Queen Elizabeth's time amendments had to be made in the Statute of Woods, and the felling of oak, beech, or ash trees for making charcoal for iron-smelting had to be prohibited within fourteen miles of the sea or of any navigable river. Careful detailed surveys were also made in all the royal forests lying to the south of the river Trent, in order to know what stock of oak timber they contained; and in some of these forests the "encoppicements" or enclosures then made were "set" or sown with acorns, beech - nuts, and thorns. Many of what are now the most beautiful parts of the New Forest were then raised in this manner, such as Ridley Wood, Bratley, Bramble Hill, Malwood, and Bignell. One of the most celebrated of such early artificial plantations consisted in a thirteen-acre block of oak in a corner of Cranbourne Chase, in Windsor Forest, formed in or about 1588, as it is said to have been due to the great Lord Burleigh's desire to try and provide future supplies of oak in inland local

or sowings were also ordered in the New Forest and the Forest of Dean.

Although the planting of yews in churchyards had been practised since before 1307, as seems clear from a statute in the time of Edward I., yet planting on any large scale with live plants does not seem to have been practised in any of the English woodlands until early in the seventeenth century, when it appears to have been introduced mainly on account of the acorns, beech-mast, and other seeds being devoured by field- mice and voles. To whom the credit of this great advance in raising and renewing woodlands is due cannot now be determined; but in any case the first mention of it as a practical forest measure seems to be met with in the preface to the second edition (in 1615, the first edition having been in 1613) of Arthur Standish's 'New Directions . . . for the Increasing of Timber and Firewood,' where he says, regarding complaints of tree-seeds having been eaten by field-mice when sown, "the remedy for such as would raise plants is by nurseries, where the mice may be destroyed by traps."

Standish's work is merely a thin pamphlet of thirty-four pages, issued just five years after a new survey had been made, in 1608, of all the timber in the royal forests, and orders had been issued for ploughing land and gathering and sowing acorns "by men's hands," to try and increase the supply of oak in the future. By this time

ing, and the supply of homegrown timber which alone could be depended on-was rapidly falling. The decay of timber was "universally complained of" within the realm, and the second edition of the pamphlet (1615) had the honour of a prefatory royal proclamation, in which King James commanded "all Noblemen, Gentlemen, and others our loving Subjects, to whom it may appertaine" to willingly receive and put in practice the author's suggestions.

At the present moment, when a Royal Commission's Afforestation Report has recently recommended the acquisition (by expropriation, if necessary) and planting of six million acres in Scotland, two and a half million in England and Wales, and at least half a million in Ireland, or nine million acres in all, at the rate of 150,000 acres per annum during the next sixty years, and at an annual cost of two million pounds sterling, it is of interest to note what seemed the prospect as regards future needs, and what was the very modest recommendation made just about three hundred yoars ago. Deducting waste, Standish estimated that there remained twenty-five million acres of land in England, and considered that "if two hundred and forty thousand acres be planted and preserved according to the directions following, which is but the hundredth part of the twenty-five millions, there may be as much timber raised as will maintaine the kingdome for

But as the seventeenth century advanced England's position with regard to shipbuilding timber grew more and more serious, for Charles I. sold and granted large portions of the Crown forests, and Cromwell greatly increased the Navy. When Charles II. ascended the throne in 1660, the scarcity of oak had become so great that the newly founded Royal Society was asked to suggest a remedy. The task of submitting a report was confided to John Evelyn, of Sayes Court, whose charming and classic 'Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees, and the Propagation of Timber,' read before the Royal Society on October 15, 1662, and published soon afterwards, but subsequently extended in four editions before the author's death on February 27, 1706, gives us a very good idea of what old English Forestry was, as practised at that time.

Evelyn's 'Sylva' is one of the three great books which have been most fruitful in stimulating landowners to plant. We have it on his own authority that many millions of timber-trees were planted in England solely through the impulse given by this book within Evelyn's lifetime; and the nation reaped a rich benefit from this planting during our Continental war over a hundred years ago, when the supply of oak for the Navy almost entirely ran out. Two

articles, one in March 1809, having one of Dr Hunter's annotated editions for its text, and another in April 1818, on Evelyn's Memoirs,' revived the influence of 'Sylva,' and drew the attention of landowners to the advantages of growing timber in those days of fiscal protection. But the next great book exerting a strong influence on planting was Sir Walter Scott's Heart of Mid-Lothian,' when the shrewd advice given by the Laird o' Dumbiedykes proved to be seed that fell upon rich soil-"Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping." Despite the scientific inaccuracy of a half-whimsical, half-serious statement which treats as of no account the great winter repose of the trees of the forest, when our woodlands are most beautiful just before entering into their long hibernal rest, and just after reawakening from it, like giants refreshed by sleep, and clothing themselves in their new vernal foliage, there can be no doubt that these suggestive words, put as if dropping from the mouth of the dying laird, combined with the more direct special pleading for planting contained in Scott's two great arboricultural essays published in the 'Quarterly Review' for October 1827 and March 1828, gave another great impulse to timber-growing at this more recent period. Many of the beechwoods planted in the Scottish Highlands by the

Duke of Argyll and other landowners about the middle of the eighteenth century were then becoming nearly mature, and to the influence of the Great Wizard's pen was in no small measure due the replanting and extending of many of the woods in different parts of Britain, but especially in Scotland, about 1830.

The third and last of the authors who powerfully influenced British arboriculture was Loudon, whose comprehensive 'Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum' did all that could be done by a single individual to stimulate interest in trees and planting about 1840. But by that time British Forestry was rapidly becoming, or had even already become, a lost art. The command of the seas kept the ocean highways open for the import of timber from America, and teak from India had already been gradually replacing home-grown oak for shipbuilding, while the rapid improvements then being made in both internal and overseas communication in many parts of the world all exerted direct influence in producing the decay of British Arboriculture. This, however, did not receive its final death-blow as a great branch of rural economy until the last of the timber import duties were abolished in 1866. Owing to our great paucity of extensive woodlands there is among us none of that innate and almost hereditary knowledge of trees and timber crops which is so marked among the inhabitants of the more densely wooded portions of France and

Germany. Naturally, our small copses and fox-coverts have less effect on our daily lives and thoughts than is the case where great stretches of woodland are in constant view, and where the ring of the axe and the whir of the sawmill resound on the outskirts of every village. But despite our want of woodlands there is no country where trees grow more beautifully than in Britain, and no country where there is a deeper and more passionate love of trees, as trees, and not as crops of wood worth so-andso-much per acre. And it is one of the great charms of Evelyn's 'Sylva' that in his description of our woodland, hedgerow, and park trees, he writes about them in a manner that not only shows he is deeply interested in them himself, but also makes one share his interest and enthusiasm. He gossips about them. He tells us where they came from, and to what uses they are put, including some that seem very marvellously incredible Poetry, history, and tradition enliven his pages, interspersed with shrewd observations and sagacious suggestions. And though economic conditions have become vastly changed during these last two hundred years and more, yet the spirit that lives and breathes and finds its utterance in 'Sylva' is undying among English country gentlemen, and is still found strongly influencing many of our great landowners. And it is an influence that cannot be indicated in any mere enumeration of the num

now.