326 Forestry Quarterly. 



Full seed years are few and far between for oak in Eastern 

 France ; the statistics for oak seed years show that a partial crop 

 occurs on an average of every eight or ten years but that a full, 

 abundant crop occurs only every twenty years or even more. 



But when it rains it pours. The acorns literally cover the 

 ground. It is indeed fortunate that hogs are rigorously ex- 

 cluded from the forest. 



The beech is not so difficult of regeneration. Indeed, under 

 this quasi shelterwood system of cutting, the beech reproduces 

 very abundantly for its tolerance enables it to come in before al- 

 most any other species. The trick is rather to keep the beech 

 within bounds and to secure a high percentage of oak in the mix- 

 ture. This means a constant favoring of the oak as against the 

 beech; yet if the preparatory or the seed cuttings are too heavy, 

 the sudden access of light will bring a tangle of grass and weeds 

 sufficient to choke the oak seedlings for which the greater ac- 

 cess of light was intended. 



This process of regeneration and of maintaining the balance 

 between beech and oak, requires the highest skill on the part of 

 the forester. It is therefore the more to his credit that planting 

 is rarely necessary and only resorted to where the axe has failed ; 

 then stout transplants 18 to 20 inches high are used. 



The forester's role as mediator continues after the regenera- 

 tion has been accomplished and the final removal cuttings of 

 the old stand made ; for then the more rapid growth of the 

 beech tends to dominate the slower growing but far more valu- 

 able oak. At first it is only necessary to clean out the stand — 

 removing the dead and dying and the wolf trees which are tak- 

 ing up more than their just share of space. But after about 

 the thirtieth year the real thinnings begin, moderate at first but 

 becoming more and more intense as the stand grows older. 

 These thinnings are made at intervals of, at most, ten years and 

 are invariably thinnings from above (Eclaircie par le haut). 

 This method of thinning, first developed in France but since then 

 widely copied, is in direct contrast with the thinnings from be- 

 low (Eclaircie par le bas) usually practiced in Germany. These 

 two methods may be defined : 



Thinnings from below aim to remove only the suppressed trees ; 

 the undergrowth is not necessarily removed since this is only a 



