THE NEW FORESTRY. 



CHAPTER XII. 

 THE THINNING OF PLANTATIONS. 



German Methods. Their application to British Woodlands. Execution of 

 the Work. Pruning, &c. 



SECTION I. GERMAN METHODS. 



GERMAN foresters copy nature within safe limits ; and we may 

 glance at nature's process first. In natural forests, at the 

 beginning, the young trees usually spring up in far greater 

 numbers than can find room to grow for any considerable 

 length of time, with the result that the struggle for existence 

 soon sets in, and a very large proportion perish at an early 

 stage of existence, the weak growers being over-topped and 

 smothered by their stronger neighbours. From beginning 

 to end of the forest's existence this struggle goes on, the 

 weaklings perishing at an almost wholesale rate while still 

 young, the mortality becoming less and less as the years go 

 on, until the trees reach mature age and the strongest only 

 survive. In the natural beech forests of the Continent the 

 number of young trees that spring up is prodigious, from 

 eighty to a hundred being sometimes found on a square yard, 

 over great tracts, at the end of three or four years, after which 

 the smothering process sets in and they thin themselves out 

 rapidly. In Plate No. 5 the mass of vegetation shown in the 

 foreground consists wholly of young beech seedlings, knee 

 deep, from seed shed by the previous crop natural regenera- 

 tion. Artificial planting is resorted to only to fill up blanks, 

 which are not numerous, as the ground at the end of the 

 rotation period is usually bare and covered with humous, and 

 seedlings come up in abundance. During the whole period 

 from youth to age the overhead canopy of foliage remains 

 unbroken unless disturbed by accident, the tops of the 

 dominant trees meeting over the tops of the weaker ones 



