SOME ASPECTS OF THE EXCURSION TO GERMANY, 175 
exceptions, are first removed, and then the oaks are reluced to 
about sixty per acre. When a seed year is apparent, the ground 
is prepared for the reception of the seed, the roots having been 
extracted previously. A few years later the oaks are reduced to 
forty, and the remaining beeches are removed, and six years later 
the whole of the oaks. By that method a good stocking is gener- 
ally obtained. 
Beech woods are generally worked on a rotation of 120 years, 
and on a soil of the first quality reach a height of over 100 feet, 
with a volume which sometimes approaches 9000 feet of measur- 
able timber, or 13,000 feet, including top-wood, per acre. Until 
about the age of eighty years these woods are kept pretty dense. 
Afterwards freer thinnings are instituted, until about the 
hundredth year, when the so-called seed-felling takes place, to 
admit of the surface mould being, by greater exposure, sufficiently 
decomposed for seed germination, and to place the crop in a con- 
dition for bearing seed. If the surface is free from vegetation, 
and of an open character, no artificial preparation is necessary in 
a seed year; if otherwise, it may have to be scarified by harrow- 
ing, so that a suitable seed-bed may be formed. Everything being 
favourable, a good stocking is generally obtained with the first 
seeding, but if imperfect, the next occurring seed year, which is 
usually three or four years later, has to be taken advantage of. 
When the grouad is fully stocked, and the young plants out of 
danger from frosts, the whole of the matured timber is cleared off, 
unless, as is frequently the case, a few selected trees per acre are 
left for another rotation, with the view of producing a heavy class 
of timber, In order to vary the crop, elm and other hardwoods 
are sometimes artificially added. It occasionally happens that 
the overhead canopy is opened up by windfalls, so that grass and 
other herbage covers the ground, and thus makes it impossible, 
unless at considerable trouble and expense, to secure a good 
seed-bed, and afterwards keep the seedlings from being choked 
by herbage. In such a case, if the canopy has not been too 
much interrupted, the trees are allowed to remain until they 
have again formed a close canopy, and the herbage, in con- 
sequence, has been killed out. 
During the last fourteen years the Prussian Government 
have annually voted considerable sums for the introduction of 
exotics, and, with the view of testing their qualities under sylvi- 
cultural conditions, they have been introduced into most of the 
