102 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



lings of beech which were thickly scattered over the scene of the 

 thinning under the poles to be thinned. Perhaps he remembers 

 to this day the compliment he got. Thinnings were only just 

 coming into practice, and the poor man was only giving the coupe 

 the usual "wash and brush up," as though it wei*e a tan-bark 

 coppice, where the operation is known as cbrousser, debroussailler. 



It is easy to foresee the difficulty of thinnings in forests where 

 the species are mixed in every possible way, but the complexity 

 adds to the interest. I shall always remember my first walk in 

 the Foret de Haye with MM. Parade and Nanquette, when I 

 took charge of the Nancy-ouest Cantonment, which was about to 

 be given over to the Forest School. Arriving from the Canton 

 Anne Verjus, we proceeded along a compartment which comes to 

 a point at the Cinq Tranchees. On our left a very ill-constituted 

 pole-crop dominated saplings of beech. In the absence of any 

 officer, a brigadier had been thinning out the beech saplings 

 below and cleaning the soil. " What a pretty sight ! " said 

 M. Parade, with a sly smile. "Yes," said I, rather warmly, 

 "but the thinning is nob made." "Well, make it!" was the 

 reply. So, as scon as the leaves had fallen, there was a cutting 

 in the pole-crop. About 320 cubic feet per acre were taken out, 

 aspens, beeches that were threatening oaks, coppice shoots over- 

 taking beech saplings, and surplus stems of all kinds. Twelve 

 years later M. Boppe thinned out the same coupe, and took out 

 a lot more material, leaving from that time a nice young seedling 

 forest of beech, oak, and hornbeam over those 69 acres, that were 

 formerly a tangled and disorderly mass of supererogatory stems. 

 This juridical word was even used on another occasion, a short 

 time after, by the first president of the Cour d'Appel to 

 M. Parade, who was explaining the operation. The magistrate 

 had grasped the idea as one understands the definition of the 

 term thinning, which indicates the classes of stems affected. 

 The practical difficulty of discerning which those stems are, 

 remains a matter of art and of skill. 



With conifers the matter is no easier than it is with the 

 broad-leaved species. Look at a young pine-wood, uniform 

 and crowded, and commencing to sicken in consequence. Every 

 one of the crowns is a long, narrow cone, reaching upwards, and 

 stretching for its life. Which are to come out? How many 

 stems ? Will the thinning be repeated, and when ? Can it be 

 foretold? It is so difficult to differentiate that one is tempted 



