Periodical Literature 47 



tions on naked lime stone slopes at Madulein, where soil for the 

 plants had to be carried to the plant hole, and sometimes watering 

 was found necessary, were made at $13 per M., with great success. 



Forst-und bautechnische Reise. Schweizerische Zeitschrift fiir Forstwe- 

 sen. Nov. 1905, pp. 269-277, ill. 



Criticism recently calling to task the prac- 



Severe tice in Prussia of making heavier cuttings 



Thinnings. than the yearly growth would seem to 



warrant, and of making thinnings more 



severe than was once the rule is met by Dr. Schwappach. Such 



excessive cuttings the critic maintains, are inroads upon the 



fixed forest capital and threaten future productiveness, while it is 



held that established facts show there is no increase in total 



product obtained by heavy thinnings, such being balanced in 



effect by the loss in the final cut. 



But the removal of over- ripe stands is just what the present 

 conditions in Prussia demand, and with due regard to economic 

 conditions this cannot occur too soon. The forests are still so 

 far from the normal that the sustained yield argument must be 

 disregarded. Reforestation is one of the ways in which this 

 excess capital tied up in these old overmature stands may be well 

 re-invested. 



Defending the practice of thinning, and assuming first that the 

 critic's position that thinnings exert no effect in stimulating the 

 growth is correct, Schwappach shows the advantage of frequent 

 thinnings which remove diseased and decaying trees before they 

 become entirely worthless, and of early thinnings which bring a 

 return from the capital long before the final harvest is obtained. 

 Though these returns may be small, the fact that they come 

 early in the life of the stand makes them important. 



But the early and severe thinnings, except in the case of the 

 Scotch Pine, have been shown to exert a beneficial influence up- 

 on the volume growth of the stand ; and in case of the Scotch 

 Pine there is at least as good growth as with less severe thinning. 

 The value increment is not lessened by the more severe thinning, 

 so that even without allowing for the interest derivable from 

 earlier returns and simply summing up the yield money returns 

 remain about the same as where the older method is used. When 

 one stops to consider that heavy thinnings cause the volume in- 



