THINNINGS. Ill 



kept at a limited distance, will continue to shade the bole, and, 

 as the oak grows and enlarges its crown, these trees will gradually 

 disappear. 



The various species, naturally mixed, will be far from possess- 

 ing the longevity of the oak, and may reproduce again below the 

 oaks an uneven and most useful underwood. Thus managed, a 

 pedunculate oak forest, often interlarded here and there with ash 

 and elm, will do wonders. Such crops are exceptional in France, 

 for lands that are irrigable or siltable are mostly occupied by 

 agriculture or meadows. Even in the low-lying forests, it is 

 frequently only in a few compartments, and especially along 

 water-channels within flood limits, that the genuine forest of 

 pedunculate oak, alder, and ash or elm, the true meadow-land 

 forest, exists. Generally it is worked as a short rotation coppice 

 with standards ; this is easy, but in these coppices the oaks are 

 often but thinly scattered, and leave much to be desired on the 

 score of shape and soundness ; really valuable trees are scarce. 

 The treatment of the pedunculate oak in high forest by the bold 

 thinnings that are requisite for its luxuriant growth, gives produce 

 of incomparable quality. Look at the oaks, growing among 

 alders, cut every fifteen or twenty years ; imagine 20 of them to 

 the acre; fancy them double their present height; calculate their 

 value at 120 or 150 years, when they will girth 10 to 13 feet, 

 and see what it comes to ! 



The pedunculate oak is found also as high forest, even pure, on 

 poor sand; but what a contrast! In 1869, under the pleasant 

 guidance of M. Le Tellier, it happened that M. Bagneris and self 

 visited the forest of Boulogne, which is contiguous with the park 

 of Chambord, in Sologne. There, in the Canton des Theillets, 

 we saw a high pole-crop of pure pedunculate, aged one hundred 

 years, very full, but slender, ill-shaped, and only 8 inches in 

 diameter. It reminded me of the "Sleeping Beauty." At Com- 

 piegne, too, Canton des Vineux, there is a sorry high forest of 

 pure pedunculate oak, originally planted, whose boles, already 

 garnished with epicorms, make them appear to fear a thinning. 

 The feeble crowns, the soil covered with heath, give no hope of 

 a spontaneous restoration to better things. Had there been a 

 mixture of beech or an undergrowth of hazel, one could have 

 thinned out the oaks and made something of them, though they 

 are always ill-placed on dry sands. Isolating them now would 

 kill them ; all that can be done now is to give them the 



