The Forestry Commission carried out censuses of Woodlands and Trees in 1924, 1938, 1947—49, 1965-67 and most recently between 1979 and 1982. Only two of these data collection and collation exercises came close to being a census in the sense of being a complete enumeration. The first was in 1924 when questionnaires were submitted by owners owning blocks of 2 hectares or more and the second was the 1947 census in which all woodland blocks of 5 acres and over shown on 6-inch to 1 mile Ordnance Survey maps were visited and assessed. The remainder of the censuses have in fact taken the form of sample surveys, the sampling aspect becoming most pronounced in the last two surveys. The purpose of this report is to describe the details of the sample survey aspects of the 1979-82 Census of Woodlands and Trees.