300 ON THE SOILS AND SUBSOILS 



Illation of coppice. As hinted, liowever, where more valuable 

 trees will grow, tlie hornbeam is not much cared for, and even in 

 coppice we do not find it in pure woods, but generally associated 

 with beech, oak, hazel, lime, ash, maples, ehn {Ehamnus frangula, 

 Cornus sanguinea, &c.), a mixture well suited for the south side of 

 a hill with limy soil. On commons and places used for pasture, 

 it may be pollarded with a term of about nine years, as is usual 

 in Germany. 



Its leaves form a soil-improving humus, and as it bears the 

 shade of standards as well as beech, it is admirably suited for 

 forming the underwood in composition forests, or in oak or other 

 forests which, if pure, or thickly interspersed with a soil-im- 

 proving tree, require the aid of a shade-bearing covering to the 

 soil. Eighty years we consider as the average life of the horn- 

 beam; that of the beech 120 years. Xow, on strong mineral soil, 

 if dry, the beech nmst come to the axe much sooner, if we do not 

 wish to be compelled in after years to call in the aid of a conifer 

 for a generation to improve the soil. Here, then, it is that the 

 liorubeam must be suffered to dwell, along with its nobler relative, 

 in whatever capacity it chooses, as underwood or as timber tree, — 

 anything that will keep the soil in shade and help to retain the 

 atmospheric moisture. 



Although an aid to the beech on a strong soil inclined to dry- 

 ness, the natural home of the hornbeam is over fresh or moist 

 humous, strong mineral soils of any kind. Sands or clays, marls, 

 loams or limes, if fresh and humous, are alike its home. As 

 regards the shape of the stem itself, it never has a cylindrical 

 shape, the circumference, no matter over what soil it grows, 

 being always more or less wavy. 



In the hollows formed on granite hills a good fresh clayey 

 soil collects, where the beech, with ash, maples, and elm is- 

 usually cultivated, and where the hornbeam, bearing seed early 

 and often, steals in and has a good gro\\-th. The same may be 

 said of the clayey porphyries, with their fresh and often moist 

 fertile soils. Diabas, melaphyr, and basalt yielding their dark 

 red clayey soils, containing a little lime, and on the whole fresh 

 and fertile {e.g., Gabelskuppe, between Eisenach and Marksuhl), 

 also produce hornbeams of good growth, although, to the exclusion 

 of more valuable timber, allowable only on spots visited hy late 

 frosts, and on those places where wind, &c. may have overthrown 

 or killed single stems. 



Around Eisenach, where the Eothtod liegendes on the outskirts 

 of the Thuringer Wald undulates very much, it occupies many 

 of the hollows, that, however fresh and fertile the dark red clayey 

 varieties, are not suitable for the less hardy trees. This is 

 frequently observed in many parts of the Lchrforste dtr Eisauicher 

 Forstlchranstalt. On the better, dark red, clayey sand of the 

 bunter sandstein it again endeavours to push its way among the 



