88 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



in British tree lists, and recommended for planting has been 

 the cause of a great deal of indiscriminate mixing, resulting 

 in little else than trouble and loss in the end. Generally 

 speaking, mixed woods in this country may be divided into 

 four classes, viz., mixtures of different varieties of the conifera 

 only ; mixtures of broad-leaved species only ; mixtures consist- 

 ing of both the conifera and broad-leaved species ; and 

 grouped woods. The three first are common, and it may be 

 asserted that probably nothing has tended more to make the 

 forester's task difficult in this country than the indiscriminate 

 mixing of species of greatly dissimilar habit It has caused 

 endless trouble in thinning, and much pruning that should 

 never have been needed Our very mixed woods would puzzle 

 a Continental forester who' does not contemplate such mixtures 

 as ours; hence a good deal of the confusion that has arisen 

 when home and foreign forestry has been compared. If a 

 German forester had to deal with an English wood consisting 

 of a general mixture of numerous species, and had to proceed 

 on his own principle, he would not dally by pruning and hack- 

 ing the biggest and best trees in the wood to give the weaker 

 species an equal chance, but would remove what he calls the 

 dominated and suppressed trees ; and as these would be the 

 weaker species, the result, in no long period, would be that 

 the wood would consist of the species that should have been 

 planted exclusively at the beginning. The English forester, 

 on the other hand, wants to preserve his mixture as he began ; 

 and to give weak and strong a chance, he has to fight the battle 

 with the pruning knife, without regard to overhead canopy. 

 The fast-growing poplar will be many feet above the tallest 

 of its neighbours and extending its branches over their heads 

 at an early stage ; the beech, while asserting itself in height- 

 growth, will, from its shade-enduring power, extend its lateral 

 branches to the ground and smother all the weaker species 

 within its reach ; and so on with other species in mixtures in 

 which much disparity of habit exists. The same remarks 

 apply to conifera mixtures when planted in nearly equal pro- 

 portions. Such species as the Douglas fir, for example, will 

 oust most of its neighbours, and the common and silver spruces 

 will soon dominate such weak species as the white spruce, 

 Abies alba, Pinus cembra, and others. Plantation mixtures in 

 this country are planted on the principle that if one species 

 fails another may succeed and be useful ; whereas such a 

 practice is not defensible, because the species that succeed 

 together and the conditions that suit them are now pretty 

 well known, and judicious mixtures may be easily selected. 



