874 FUTAIE, OR FULL-GROWTH SYSTEM. 
large wood of any species cannot be grown in this method, be- 
cause trees which shoot from decaying stumps and their dying 
roots, become hollow or otherwise unsound before they acquire 
their full dimensions. A more fatal objection still, is, that the 
roots of trees will not bear more than two or three, or at most 
four cuttings of their shoots before their vitality is exhausted, 
and the wood can then be restored only by replanting entirely. 
The period of cutting coppices varies in Europe from fifteen to 
forty years, according to soil, species, and rapidity of growth. 
In the futace, or full-growth system, the trees are allowed to 
stand as long as they continue in healthy and vigorous growth. 
This is a shorter period than would be at first supposed, when 
we consider the advanced age and great dimensions to which, 
under favorable circumstances, many forest-trees attain in 
temperate climates. But, as every observing person familiar 
with the forest is aware, these are exceptional cases, just as are 
instances of great longevity or of gigantic stature among men. 
Able vegetable physiologists have maintained that the tree, 
tion,”’ says Clavé, ‘‘may arrive at the age of five or six hundred years in full 
vigor, and attain dimensions which I have never seen surpassed ; when, how- 
ever, they are wholly unmixed with other trees, they begin to decay and die 
at the top, at the age of forty or fifty years, like men, old before their time, 
weary of the world, and longing’ only to quit it. This has been observed in 
most of the oak plantations of which I have spoken, and they have not been 
able to attain to full growth. When the vegetation was perceived to languish, 
they were cut, in the hope that this operation would restore their vigor, and 
that the new shoots would succeed better than the original trees; and, in 
fact, they seemed to_be recovering for the first few years. But the shoots 
were soon attacked by the same decay, and the operation had to be renewed 
at shorter and shorter intervals, until at last it was found necessary to treat 
as coppices plantations originally designed for the full-growth system. Nor 
was this all: the soil, periodically bared by these cuttings, became impover- 
ished, and less and less suited to the growth of the oak. . . It wasthen 
proposed to introduce the pine and plant with it the vacancies and glades. 
By this means, the forest was sayed from the ruin which threatened 
it, and now more than 10,000 acres of pines, from fifteen to thirty years old, 
are disseminated at various points, sometimes intermixed with broad-leayed 
trees, sometimes forming groves by themselves.”—Reovue des Deue Mondes, 
Mai, 1863, pp. 153, 154. 
