474 Forestry Quarterly. 



and weaker trees from producing seed and regenerating the stand 

 with inferior stock. 



The clear cutting in strips, as practiced on the lower slopes 

 in coniferous stands, is done on a far larger scale than one sees 

 it elsewhere. The name ''strip" scarcely applies ; for it is the 

 placing of each year's felling next to that of the preceding year, 

 until the felling area sometimes is half a mile in width. In 

 the past, and even now in the more remote regions, this was 

 necessitated by the economic conditions — it did not pay to render 

 a certain logging unit accessible, unless the felling areas could 

 be concentrated. But now, as economic conditions are improv- 

 ing and foresters are universally coming to realize the dangers 

 of large felling areas (snow, wind, fire, insects, fungi, etc!) the 

 tendency is strongly toward a narrowing and scattering of the 

 felling strips ; a width not to exceed the height of the tree is 

 aimed at. 



Of course, with such wide strips — and even with the narrower 

 ones — natural regeneration cannot be relied on, though scattered 

 seed trees are usually left of desirable, windfirm species, to in- 

 troduce variety into the artificial restocking.. The larch plays 

 a remarkable role in this respect : scattered seed trees of larch 

 can be counted on to produce an admixture of their seedlings on 

 almost every felling area. Sometimes the larch reproduction is 

 actually too dense ; for pure stands of larch soon go to pieecs 

 because of mutual over-crowding. 



The cutting of the strips progresses against the prevailing 

 wind direction, as determined by careful local observations. Af- 

 ter cutting, the brush is burned in windrows, or left to rot in 

 low piles, or scattered. There seldom is a market for these fag- 

 gots in Austria. After lying fallow for two years (three years 

 if the area is very extensive), the area is restocked artificially 

 by one of the methods described in the following article IX of 

 this series. The scattered seed trees introduce their offspring into 

 the stand, occasional patches of advance growth survive the 

 felling, and soon what looked like a mountain pasture, is a thrifty 

 young stand. 



That this process has been successfully carried on over many 

 thousand acres in Austria, is due directly to the freshness of the 

 soil and the greatly favoring climatic conditions such as long 

 growing seasons and much precipitation. In places, large clear 



