But there is another point that I should like to touch upon whilst dealing with the formation of plantations, and that is that the work should only be entrusted to the efficient and practical wood manager, who is fully conversant with the whole routine of woodland work. It is frequently urged that forestry does not pay, but where this holds good, the cause is always traceable to injudicious planting and wrong methods of management. No more can we expect the gardener, gamekeeper, estate joiner, or even the land agent to undertake economical timber culture than we could expect the forester to carry out successfully the duties of any of these individuals. Wrongly formed plantations are, unfortunately, far too common, in so far, at least, as adaptation of soil and trees are concerned, the result being that, financially speaking, the woods are a failure, and proprietors, in consequence, fight shy of further planting operations. When pressing home the question of the extension of plantations, I have more than once been confronted by the statement that past experience does not warrant further expenditure in that way. That this is true cannot be denied, in many instances at least, but, then, as above stated, faulty methods of management are alone responsible for the failure. =Financial Returns from Tree Planting.=—Though it must be admitted that, in the majority of cases at least, the financial returns cannot be accepted as strictly correct (in most cases they are too low), owing to the woods being treated for other than commercial purposes, yet in not a few instances, where neither game-rearing nor ornamental effect have to be considered, the yield of timber and gross returns for a stated number of years are perfectly reliable. Of course, where game coverts and underwood, or where the perfect development of the trees, as in ornamental plantations, are matters of first importance, and require that the individual specimens be scattered thinly over the ground, the greatest yield of the best quality of timber cannot be expected; but where, as on various Scottish and English estates, the trees are grown thickly together and solely for their economic value, the case is quite different, as the returns given below will attest.