CONTINENTAL NOTES FRANCE. 155 



our wood capital will have been encroached upon and the after 

 results will be painful. 



An owner as a rule probably waits until he thinks, or his 

 woodman tells him (if he has not strong views on the matter 

 himself) that there is some mature timber ready before he sells, 

 and this is a safeguard, but unless the true point of maturity 

 has been carefully worked out there is risk. For there are 

 markets, as that for chair-legs, which can use immature timber, 

 and if immature timber is removed there will be a loss of 

 material — more could have been made of the forest. 



These reflections are induced by a perusal of a long article 

 by the late M. Emil Mer, in which he states that in the higher 

 Vosges the prescription of possibility by volume has been applied 

 in too doctrinaire a manner, and has led to uncultural action. 

 The forests concerned are worked under the Uniform method 

 (or the method of Successive Fellings with Thinnings). In the 

 usual way a rotation was fixed within which to substitute a new 

 crop naturally regenerated from the old. The rotation was 

 divided into periods, and the forest divided into a similar 

 number of periodic blocks. The blocks were to be regenerated 

 successively by the removal of the old stock in the corresponding 

 periods. To that extent it is a case of possibility by area, but 

 when taking up a periodic block for regeneration possibility 

 bv volufne is prescribed. The block has to be cleared and 

 a new crop substituted within the period, and the annual yield 

 must be constant. Here, and this is the usual case, difficulties 

 came in, for in the later periodic blocks there were often mature 

 and over-mature stems which ought to have been removed 

 (as a part of the possibility), whereas in fact the operator was 

 preoccupied with the block under regeneration, and the annual 

 quota of cubic feet was taken from it. The mature stems 

 elsewhere were left, and even thinnings urgently required by 

 the crop in other blocks were omitted. 



French foresters are, in fact, much perturbed these days by 

 the difficulty of working the Uniform method with a prescribed 

 volume possibility, and a number of compromises have been 

 suggested for avoiding cultural errors without omitting the 

 absolutely essential guarantee against overcutting. For example, 

 there are the Quartier bleu plan and Duchaufour's method. 

 Under the Quartier bleu system, if it is found that in other 

 periodic blocks there are areas more urgently needing regenera- 



