234 FORESTRY IN FRANCE. 
dying out. It is not adopted in the areas under the State Forest 
Department. (Second) That known as /wretage, in which, instead 
of clean-cutting the coppice, those shoots only are taken which have 
attained to certain fixed dimensions, the operation being repeated 
annually, or after intervals varying from two to five years, Muretage 
prevails chiefly in the valley of the Seine, in the forests from which 
the fuel supply of Paris is drawn; but it is also employed in the 
mountainous districts of the south, in the case of forests maintained 
for the protection of steep slopes, which it is undesirable to denude 
entirely. 
It is impossible here to enter into anything like full details 
regarding these sylvicultural questions. To study them completely, 
as they are taught and practised in France, reference must be made 
to the books on the subject, among which may be mentioned “ The 
Manual of Sylviculture,” by G. Bagneris (translated into English by 
Messrs Fernandez and Smythies), Rider & Son, London ; and “Le 
traitement des bois en France,” by C. Broillard, Berger-Levrault, 
Paris. 
Workina PLANs. 
Working plans or schemes will, in course of time, be prepared for 
all forests administered by the Forest Department. The law pro- 
vides that all these forests shall be subjected to the provisions of 
such plans, and that no fellings which are not provided for therein, 
and no extraordinary cuttings, either from the communal “reserve,” 
or in the blocks destined to grow from coppice to high-forest, shall 
be made without the express sanction, in each case, of the Govern- 
ment, by whom all plans must be approved before they can be 
adopted. 
Subject to due provision being made for the exercise of rights of 
user, the working plan provides for the management of the forest in 
the way that will best serve the interests of the proprietor. Unlike 
an agricultural crop, which ripens and is gathered annually, trees 
take many years to grow to a marketable size, the actual period that 
they require being dependent not only on their species, and the 
natural conditions under which they are grown—as climate, soil, 
and so forth—but also on the use to which they are to be put. Thus, 
a coppice being required to yield wood of small size only, may be 
cut every twenty-five to forty years ; whereas a high-forest, which is 
destined to produce large timber, must stand for a much longer time. 
It would be excessively inconvenient if the entire crop of such a 
