THE NEW FORESTRY. 



21 



in the centre and the dwarfed ones at the outsides, ideal 

 nesting, feeding and flushing spots, in any number, might soon 

 be established, surpassing anything practicable in our present 

 over-thinned woods, which are for the most part a miserable 

 compromise between a timber crop and a game preserve. Of 

 course, drives and rides could also be planted in the above 

 manner. The great point is to begin systematically and plant 

 and sow freely so as to establish groups soon. 



It will, we hope, be understood that we do not propose to 

 plant any of the subjects named under the shade of the timber 

 trees where, as is the case in many woods now, they struggle 

 weakly on, without bearing fruit or affording good covert ; but 

 to plant in the open where they will succeed. All our wild 

 berry-bearing plants bear freely in open spaces. 



The shade-bearers are the only species fit to plant as under- 

 wood in dense woods, and they are few in number, consisting 

 of the beech, spruce, horse chestnut and holly, and one or two 

 others ; of these beech and spruce are the best, and the way 

 they succeed in dense German forests, in deep shade, must be 

 seen to be believed. Where such underwood is wanted, the 

 spruce and beech should be planted thickly under the timber 

 trees. This, however, is not a necessity, because if the groups 

 suggested are regularly distributed over a wood, underwood 

 is not really needed. What is aimed at by the plan suggested 

 is really a dense forest of timber trees, alternating here and 

 there with equally dense patches of open coppice consisting 

 of trees and shrubs such as have been described. 



The plan suggested in the foregoing diagram is based, as 

 regards the distribution of the coppice clumps, upon the 

 common experience of keepers that pheasants, and especially 

 home-bred birds, run before the guns until they are driven 

 into some " hot corner," with the guns behind them and the 

 " stops " in front of them, and are forced to rise. Gamekeepers 

 are constantly laying the woods under contribution for brush- 

 wood to pack flushing spots here and there in the woods for 

 the birds to run into and be put up from; and what the 

 keeper attempts in an imperfect way, with dead brushwood 

 that soon decays, it is proposed to do in a more systematic 

 way by means of living covert such as the pheasant loves to 

 haunt. Naumann, in his " Birds of Germany," according to 

 Tegetmeir, says the pheasant is certainly a forest bird, but 

 loves " small pieces of grove where deep underbush and high 

 grass grows between the trees, where thorn hedges, berry- 

 growing bushes, etc., etc., are found ; " and such haunts it is 



