FUTAIE, OE FULL-GROWTH SYSTEM. 365 



matter assimilable in the stage of growth, but no longer so when 

 increment has ceased. 



In the natm-al woods we observe that, though, among the 

 myi'iads of trees which grow upon a square mile, there are 

 several vegetable giants, yet the great majority of them begin 

 to decay long before they have attained their maximum of stat- 

 ure, and this seems to be still more emphatically true of the 

 artificial forest. In France, according to Clave, " oaks, in a suit- 

 able soil, may stand, without exhibiting any sign of decay, for 

 two or three hundred years ; the pines hardly exceed one hun- 

 dred and twenty, and the soft or white woods \l)ois Hemes'], in 

 wet soils, languish and die before reaching the fiftieth year." * 

 These ages are certainly below the average of those of American 

 forest-trees, and are greatly exceeded in very numerous well- 

 attested instances of isolated trees in Europe. 



The former mode of treating the futaie, called the garden sys- 

 tem, was to cut the trees individually as they arrived at maturity, 

 but in the best regulated forests this practice has been abandoned 

 for the German method, which embraces not only the securing 

 of the largest immediate profit, but the replanting of the forest, 

 and the care of the young growth. This is effected, in the case 

 of a forest, whether natural or artificial, which is to be subjected 

 to regular management, by three operations. The first of these 

 consists in feUuig about one-third of the trees, in such way as 

 to leave convenient spaces for the growth of seedlings. The 

 remaining two-thirds are relied upon to replant the vacancies by 

 natural sowing, which they seldom or never fail to do. The 

 seedlings are watched, are thinned out when too dense, and the 

 ill-formed and sickly, as well as those of species of inferior value, 

 and the shrubs and thorns which might otherwise choke or too 

 closely shade thera, are pulled up. When they have attained 

 sufficient strength and development of foliage to require, or at 

 least to bear, more light and air, the second step is taken by 

 removing a suitable proportion of the old trees which had been 

 spared at the first cutting ; and when, finally, the younger trees 

 are hardened enough to bear frost and sun without other protec- 

 tion than that which they mutually give to each other, the remain- 



* Etudes Forestih'es, p. 89. 



