CONTINENTAL NOTES — FRANCE. 57 



a learned article in the Revue on the amount of water required 

 by this species. He shows that the amount is relatively small, 

 and explains the fact that in spite of this the tree will not 

 always find sufficient moisture in the soil by reminding us 

 that a sandy soil has small retentive power and that the fallen 

 needles improve the physical condition of the soil but little. 

 A heavy rainfall before the buds are open is no good ; if the 

 watec has drained away by June the activity of the leaves 

 ceases, and no wood is formed. One can see how the addition 

 of the beech leaves to the soil and to the cover would affect 

 things. Thus it is that in the forests of the central plateau of 

 France you may pass from a pure pine forest into another pine 

 forest where the growth is twice as good, but where there is a 

 beech undergrowth. 



III. — For very many years the Forest Service in France 

 has been engaged in converting their coppice woods into high- 

 forest, but even now there is a very large area under coppice. 

 Private proprietors have been still more backward, for they 

 have feared the loss of revenue that was thought to be 

 unavoidable as long as the method adopted for the conversion 

 was the one taught in the nineteenth century. This was as 

 follows : — The area was divided up into periodic blocks, which 

 were to be converted successively in the number of years of 

 the rotation fixed for the new high-forest. This rotation might 

 be, say, 120 to 150 years, and not until this long time had 

 passed would the whole area have become high-forest. If 

 the coppice contained numerous standards the first periodic 

 block was regenerated at once, or rather it was started when the 

 coppice had reached thirty or forty years of age, so that if the 

 rotation of the coppice had been less than this they had to 

 wait the requisite number of years. This delay was in order 

 to bring the coppice to such an age that, when cut, it would not 

 reshoot vigorously from the stool. Even so there must have 

 been a lot of trouble with coppice shoots when they tried to 

 regenerate from seed. Meanwhile the second periodic block 

 was withdrawn from coppice felling and allowed to grow on, but 

 was thinned in such manner as to prepare the place for being 

 regenerated during the second period by high-forest methods. 

 The remaining periodic blocks continued as coppice-with- 

 standards till their turn arrived for treatment as above. 



