CONTINENTAL NOTES — FRANCE. 3 I 



the silver fir slipped through the teeth of the rake and remained 

 to fertilise the soil. 



One thus sees what great harm results from the removal of 

 dead leaves by people who come for them, but there is another 

 way by which the leaves may be lost. This is the wind On 

 exposed edges of a wood the ground is usually bare by reason 

 of the fact that the leaves have been blown into the interior 

 of the wood. This loss is not compensated for by the increase 

 in the depth of the leaves inside, for this may result in an 

 actual excess of humus. It would seem advisable, therefore, 

 to keep one's boundary hedges thick and efficient, and 

 occasionally even the raising of a bank along an exposed 

 border might be useful. 



IV. In 1916 the Germans began the ruthless removal of the 

 larger timber in the occupied territory, and conducted it with 

 the utmost thoroughness, with lines of rail, sawmills, etc. They 

 even brought the elephants from Hagenbeck's menagerie to 

 handle the logs, as in the timber depots of Burma. When 

 the French forest officers returned they wondered how they 

 would restore their forests, or where they could find sufficient 

 nursery plants. To their joy, however, they found that the 

 ground was covered — more especially in the coppice-with- 

 standards woods (as against the high-forest) — with innumerable 

 oak seedlings, and that all they had to do was to transfer 

 seedlings from the very crowded spots to such spots as were 

 less bountifully supplied. This, at any rate, was the case in 

 the neighbourhood of the great Forest of Mormal. One 

 supposes that the reason why the coppice produced seed more 

 heavily than the high-forest was that the oak standards of 

 a coppice, with their relatively large crowns, well exposed to 

 light, are naturally better seed-bearers than in the other case. 

 Before the war the Working-Plans for the high-forest prescribed 

 the classic Method of Successive (and gradual) Regeneration 

 Fellings, and the results were not successful. '' In oak woods," 

 says Broilliard, "one must proceed vigorously," and once more 

 that great master is proved right. 



The compiler of these notes has remarked the same thing 

 in certain woods known intimately to him. When he first 

 knew them, seventeen years ago, whereas the oak germinated 

 very well there resulted no young plants at all, but since then 



