Some Aspects of European Forestry. 143 



however, fail to produce the expected increase of growth possibly 

 because opening the stand too much. However, the trend is 

 toward heavier thinnings as Schwappach advocates, although 

 Borggreve's selection thinning has not found favor in pine since 

 it is too drastic for the species. 



To us, who must for many years to come, depend almost en- 

 tirely on natural regeneration of our pineries, the chief lesson to 

 be derived from Prussia's methods is the maintenance of hard- 

 woods in mixture, as an understory. There is no American 

 pinery but has its hardwood species suitable for this purpose, with 

 a little care in the management they can be maintained to the 

 betterment of the stand, soil and yield. 



As for regeneration — there is no soil in the Lake States poorer 

 than the shifting sands of Frederick the Great's domain, where 

 now stands pine forests yielding 50, 100 and even more M. board 

 feet per acre. It may not pay us as yet to restock the "pine bar- 

 rens" of the Lake States, but how about the cut-over pine lands 

 of the South with their wealth of natural reproduction? A small 

 investment now w^ll bring large returns in the future. So too, in 

 the West where despite constant fires, the young stands are spring- 

 ing up on the old slashings. The names of many Prussian towns 

 still show in their derivation the former times of slashing and 

 burning which were a necessar}'- antecedent to the present civili- 

 zation and forest culture. It is only reasonable to expect that 

 America must also travel this road and in the traveling, Prussia's 

 hard won experience of how best to treat her pineries should be of 

 value. 



IV, Management oe Spruce in Saxony. 



If the Scotch pine is the backbone of Prussian forestry, then 

 the common or Norway spruce — Picea excelsa — is certainly the 

 mainstay of the Saxon woods. It occupies over 90% of the 

 433,502 acres of State Forests; the balance is stocked with pine, 

 fir, larch, beech, oak, ash, maple, hornbeam, alder, and birch in 

 almost negligible per cents. And yet Saxony, with its rugged 

 highlands, was originally covered with mixed stands of all these 

 species with no such marked preponderance of spruce. Why then 

 the transformation into pure spruce ? 



