SYLVICULTURE. 361 



time to time felling and removing the trees which, compose it, are 

 too obvious to require to be more than hinted at. In conducting 

 these operations, we must have a diligent eye to the requirements 

 of nature, and must remember that a wood is not an arbitrary 

 assemblage of trees to be selected and disposed according to the 

 caprice of its owner. " A forest," says Clave, " is not, as is often 

 supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in 

 long perspective, without bond of union, and capable of isolation 

 from each other ; it is, on the contrary, a whole, the different 

 parts of which are interdependent upon each other, and it con- 

 stitutes, so to speak, a true individuality. Every forest has a 

 special character, determined by the form of the surface it grows 

 upon, the kinds of trees that compose it, and the manner in which 

 they are grouped." 



The art, or, as the Continental foresters rather ambitiously call 

 it, the science of sylviculture has been so little pursued in Eng- 

 land and America, that its nomenclatm*e has not been introduced 

 into the Enghsli vocabulary, and it would not be possible to de- 

 scribe its processes with technical propriety of language, without 

 occasionally borrowing a word from the forest Kterature of France 

 and Germany. A full discussion of the methods of sylviculture 

 would, indeed, be out of place in a work Kke the present, but the 

 want of conveniently accessible means of information on the sub- 

 ject, in the United States, will justify me in presenting it with 

 somewhat more of detail than would otherwise be pertinent. 



The two best known methods of treating already existing for- 

 ests are those distinguished as the taillis, copse, or coppice, treat- 

 ment,* and the futaie, for which I find no English equivalent, 

 but which may not inappropriately be called the full-growth 

 system. A taillis, copse, or coppice, is a wood composed of 

 shoots from the roots of trees previously cut for fuel and timber. 

 The shoots are thinned out from time to time, and finally cut, 

 either after a fixed number of years, or after the young trees 

 have attained to certain dimensions, their roots being then left to 



* Copse, or coppice, from the French couper, to cut, means properly a wood 

 the trees of which are cut at certain periods of immature growth, and allowed 

 to shoot up again from the roots ; but it has come to signify, very commonly, 

 a young wood, grove, or thicket, without reference to its origin, or to ita 

 character of a forest crop. 

 16 



