THINNINGS. 101 



A beech wood is constituted naturally, and almost always as a 

 dense crop, in which the steins lengthen and the crowns stretch 

 up to even 165 feet from the ground, and almost always, if the 

 soil is deep, without risk of their future being compromised. 

 But if left to itself, the beech forest, handsome as it is, does 

 not turn over the capital, the value of the timber does not 

 increase in proportion to its size, or anything like it, as happens 

 with oak. Hence there is a general impression that beech high 

 forest is a poor investment. In a general way it is, but if 

 thinned at short intervals it gives a constant supply of abundant 

 produce, even up to as much as half the current increment. 

 These forests, under timid foresters, so to say, are allowed to 

 sleep, while in Denmark, under bolder hands, they realise 55 to 

 65 cubic feet in thinnings, or almost as much as at the principal 

 fellings. The facts and figures may be found at page 261 of my 

 " Traitement des Bois." Since the beech, after every thinning, 

 spreads out its branches at once, the soil remains practically 

 always covered, the canopy fully complete, and the growth 

 flourishing. 



In broad-leaved high forest of mixed species it is another 

 story. The ash takes for its motto, " excelsior "; if it cannot 

 get ahead of the rest it languishes and dies. The oak, also, is 

 sore beset among the dense leaves of the beeches, maples, elms, 

 and hornbeam even, its finest branches are killed off, the most 

 promising individuals are ruined. In certain high forests one 

 may see the last of the oaks being strangled by the beeches, 

 struggling by devious ways as thin poles, 80 feet long and a 

 few inches thick, only to eventually die as Blender starvelings. 

 Such mixed forest calls aloud for thinnings, and they are not 

 easy. To guard the crowns of the coming oaks from their 

 infancy, when threatened by the froward birches, through their 

 youth to their mature age, when ambitious neighbours still seek 

 their ruin, requires both judgment and execution. 



It may happen that the suppressed stems, the lower story, 

 even the under-wood acquires a great importance for keeping 

 the freed crowns in a good state of growth.. In the happy days 

 when the forests of Bains en Vosge were in my charge, we used 

 to make thinnings among the oak and beech poles. One fine 

 winter's day, while visiting a thinning being made in the "Quart 

 en Reserve" of Bains itself, I espied a woodman on the edge of 

 the coupe towards the railway carefully cutting back the seed- 



