54 ' Forestry Quarterly. 



pine only was cut out this was impossible and the old method 

 usually destroyed the balance between the two species, to the 

 great disadvantage of the pine as well as to the productive ca- 

 pacity of these soils which were not rich enough to produce pure 

 spruce stands. 



Whenever possible, nowadays, in mixed stands the spruce 

 is cut first and the stand reproduced for pine with the aid of pine 

 seed trees. 



More advantageous conditions for the maintenance of pine as 

 the dominant species were in former times only present in those 

 forests, which were at the disposal of the iron works for the 

 production of charcoal. For the charcoal industry both species 

 were of equal value, so that the utilization tended towards ex- 

 tensive clear cuttings, which were quite well reproduced by 

 natural seeding. 



In many of these forests mixed stands of a high degree of 

 perfection were and can still be found, which can no longer be 

 classed as the virgin forest covering the country, but are more 

 or less the result of human activity. On the charcoal cuttings 

 the resulting stands showed quite an even development over 

 large areas, in contrast to the original irregular selection forest. 



Considering forest utilization, all methods of cutting are rep- 

 resented from the one-sided and worthless selection cutting for 

 merely the largest pine logs, down to a clear cutting, taking ev- 

 erything, even the smallest timber. According to the good will 

 and knowledge of the owner the actual cutting conforms more 

 or less to silvicultural needs, and it must be remarked that in 

 most of the Swedish forests even a slight consideration of the 

 silvicultural needs is rewarded in a surprising manner. In central 

 and southern Sweden especially there are forests which are alto- 

 gether managed according to the European examples of arti- 

 ficial forest production. And on the other hand there are still 

 immense forests in the North which are just beginning to be ex- 

 ploited, and in which a silvicultural treatment is out of the ques- 

 tion. 



The first attacks on virgin timber, excepting the charcoal 

 cuttings perhaps, have always been selection cuttings, taking at 

 first only the largest and most valuable pine saw timber. These 

 first cuttings were followed by others in which the demands for 

 size and quality of the timber steadily decreased, especially since 



