50 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIKTV. 



growth of the wood, however, is of course very irregular ; also 

 there is a vast amount of suppression. M. Schaeflfer has made 

 several thousand measurements with Presler's borer in Savoy, 

 and shows very clearly that in each of the three zones of 

 altitude adopted by him the younger trees invariably pass from 

 diameter class to diameter class in a much greater number of 

 years than did the larger trees, thus showing the effect of 

 suppression or partial want of light. The writer of these notes 

 has recently been remeasuring the diameters (at definitely 

 marked lines on the trunks) of a number of beech stems, at 

 the pole stage, in a fairly close-grown plot which was similarly 

 measured in June 1908. Although one does not expect (in 

 this particular locality) rapid diameter-growth before a stem 

 reaches 18 inches girth at chest-height, it was surprising to 

 find that the smaller stems, even though they were suppressed, 

 had actually shrunk (though only slightly) below their size of 

 practically four years before — and it gave one " furiously to 

 think" in this same connection of the .Selection method. More 

 and more is one driven in the direction of growing one's crops 

 of even age, and in consequence making one's regeneration 

 gaps large, limited, bien entendu, in the case of species (such 

 as oak or beech) with seed of too heavy a nature to go far. 



But there is a difficulty in introducing this form of the 

 Group method into a wood that has been hitherto worked on 

 the Selection method, with its confused welter of age-classes, 

 and tliis is, that whatever you do you are forced to lay bare 

 suddenly to the sunlight a large proportion of small stems that 

 have hitherto grown in partial shade, resulting, in the case of 

 beech at least, in the death of a very large proportion of 

 these small stems ; their bark, so it is supposed, is unable to 

 stand the sudden accession of light. 



It was mentioned above that a French forester's idea of re- 

 generating an area was, first and foremost, the natural method. 

 This is far less the case in Germany. The Scotch pine (easy 

 as is its natural regeneration) is throughout Germany artificially 

 regenerated. This is also generally the case with the oak. 

 So, too, with the spruce. In Bavaria, natural regeneration is the 

 rule when the beech and silver fir are the dominant species, 

 even when spruce is mixed in. There now has arisen a 

 professor at Tiibingen, Herr Wagner, who strenuously argues 

 for the natural method. He states that the prescriptions of 



