[NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry

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From: "David & Alison Webster" <dwebster@glinx.com>
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Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 20:38:33 -0400
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YmVjYXVz
Hi Steve & All,
    If you are satisfied that anyone could graze livestock on the Commons 
then the rest will fall into place if you examine woody vegetation in the 
vicinity of a pasture. Cattle and Horses will in time clean anything alive 
within a neck-length of the fence; especially Maple, Cherries and Glossy 
Buckthorn but also Hawthorn and Alder. I don't recall but I suppose they eat 
willow only if they have a headache.
Yt, Dave W
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Shaw" <srshaw@Dal.Ca>
To: <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
Sent: Monday, January 04, 2016 2:17 AM
Subject: RE: [NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry


> Hi Dave, Nick,
> Looked up H L Edlin's book which appears to have been re-issued in 2009, 
> not, apparently, as a 2nd edition but as the original from 1956 (see 
> publisher's blurb from 2009, copied below); it is now out of stock, 2 used 
> copies on Amazon for $92 each, 1956 edition.  He has published other 
> forestry-type books, the last I could find in 1973.
>
> I don't know if serious opinion on this charcoal-deforesting business has 
> moved forward (or backwards) in the intervening 60 years, a long time in 
> most fields.   Edlin may have had some early academic training (Edinburgh, 
> Oxford? -- it may say something more in the preface to Dave's own 
> edition), but it appears he was originally a forrester employed most 
> recently in editing publications for the UK Forestry Commission, and must 
> have assembled his considerable historical knowledge that way, or 'on the 
> side' -- nothing wrong with that if it's rigorously done and if not biased 
> by his job description.   It would just have been nice to have a more 
> recent perspective, though, or critical reviews from the 1950s, to 
> corroborate his views.  Perhaps modern textbooks used in academic Forestry 
> or even Biology programs would have material on this topic, but I don't 
> have such books and was waiting for someone else to chip in and tell me 
> something, rather than to have to hoof over to unfamiliar sections of the 
> library.
>
> I would guess that the anonymous unreferenced Living Countryside site that 
> Dave quoted was assembled from Edlin's account, as agreeable to them, and 
> that's why the two agreed, so it cannot be taken as independent 
> confirmation of Edlin's historical account.
>
> Dave, you are right about the very early use of charcoal, in early blast 
> furnaces originally for reducing other metals, and eventually iron. 
> Charcoal is better than the much later discovered coke in that with 
> bellows it can get much hotter than coke and also produces purer iron 
> ingots, but as Nick  says, it is a more expensive procedure.  Also its 
> compression resistance is much weaker so it cannot support nearly as much 
> weight above it as can coke, which therefore allowed development of much 
> bigger, more efficient blast furnaces with greater throughput.   Several 
> useful entries on Wikipedia push charcoal smelting back to at least 
> Neolithic times, I think it was (short term memory banks depleted).
>
> I'd not heard of Nick's George Monbiot and sheep-wrecking, but his Wiki 
> bio is a really wothwhile short story, revealing a wild, erratic 
> character -- recommended reading.
> Steve
> ---------------------
> Publicity taken from the Harper Collins, obtained via Google ('a savage 
> with a stone axe' -- undoubtedly one of my ancestors -- is a nice touch):
>
> Collins New Naturalist Library
> Trees, Woods and Man
> by H. L. Edlin
> On Sale: 14/07/2009
> Format:  Hardcover
> This title is currently out of stock
> About the Book
> A fascinating description of the changing fortunes of our forests, marked 
> by an attempt to look at woodlands from the special point of view of the 
> men of each succeeding age. This edition is exclusive to 
> newnaturalists.com
> Ever since the first New Naturalist book was published the Editors have 
> planned to devote a volume to British trees and woodlands. Mr. Edlin's 
> book at last fills this gap in the series, and fills it with charm and 
> authority. Every page bears witness to first-hand experience of what he is 
> describing.

  After training at Edinburgh and Oxford, followed by a 
> period as a rubber-planter in Malaya, Mr. Edlin had charge of felling and 
> replanting in the New Forest - work which has given him an exceptional 
> insight not only into the reasons for the disappearance in the past of so 
> much of our natural woodlands, but also into the re-establishment of 
> forests by modern methods.  Since the war, Mr. Edlin has been engaged in 
> editing technical publications for the Forestry Commission, and, 
> naturally, he deals with recent controversies over the planting policy of 
> the Commission. But Mr. Edlin's book is by no means confined to problems 
> of afforestation and the supply of timber. He deals in detail with all our 
> important trees and shrubs, both native and introduced, against the 
> background of their natural environment; and also has much to say about 
> their uses and about the woodland crafts - many of them dying out - that 
> have been handed down from the past. 

A particular feature of this book 
> is Mr Edlin's fine account of the past history of British Woodlands, from 
> the close of the Ice Age to the present day. His fascinating description 
> of the changing fortunes of our forests is marked by an attempt to look at 
> woodlands from the special point of view of the men of each succeeding 
> age, as influenced by their 'social' environment and available equipment. 
> He points out, for example, that the early settlers cleared the best 
&g