Although exhortations and royal proclamations had previously been issued more than once by James I. relative to the ‘storing’ of timber trees when falls were being made in copsewoods, and generally to ensure better effect being given to the intentions of Henry VIII’s _Statute of Woods_ of 1543, as amended during Queen Elizabeth’s reign (in 1570), yet Standish’s treatise was the first occasion (so far as I have been able to discover) on which a private subject had endeavoured to stimulate the progress of British Forestry by means of the publication of his views in the form of a small book. His aims and objects are thus described on the title-page of the second or royal edition of 1615:--“NEW DIRECTIONS OF EXPERIENCE AUTHORIZED BY THE King’s most excellent Majesty, as may appeare, for the increasing of Timber and Fire-wood, with the least waste and losse of ground. WITH A NEARE ESTIMATION, what millions of acres the Kingdome doth containe; what acres is waste ground, wherever little profit for this purpose will arise--which waste being deducted, the remaine is twenty-five millions; forth of which millions, if two hundred and forty thousand Acres be planted and preserved according to the directions following, which is but the hundred part of the twenty-five millions, there may be as much timber raised, as will maintaine the Kingdome for all uses for ever. And how as great store of Fire-wood may be raised, forth of hedges, as may plentifully mainetaine the Kingdome for all purposes, without losse of ground; so as within thirty years all Spring-woods{lxvii:1} may be converted to Tillage and Pasture. By Arthur Standish. Anno Domini MDCXV.” This was the only work of the sort which had been published up to the time of Evelyn’s _Sylva_ appearing about fifty years later, in 1662. It is curious that he made no reference to this work written with similar objects to those he himself had in view. Another work, however, he does mention, evidently that of a practical horticulturist and arboriculturist, probably belonging to a lower status of society than himself. Writing of the _New Orchard and Garden_ (1597, 2nd. edit. 1623), he patronises the author by calling him ‘our countryman honest Lawson’; and after giving a long quotation from it with regard to pruning, he complacently concludes by adding ‘Thus far the good man out of his eight and forty years experience concerning timber-trees.’