48 FIKST BOOK OF FOKESTRY 



cutting out the weaker would have helped the better trees, 

 for the poor cripples use up water and soil-food and yet 

 are unable to make trees. 



The stumps, we see, .were not always cut with care. 

 Many of them are too high ; part of the bark has dropped 

 off, and the stump is partly dry. Others are flat on top, 

 some even slant in (see Fig. 21), and many are rough, all 

 holding the rain water, and with this the spores (seeds) of 

 fungi, which will cause decay. 



Note also that many of these stumps are too old to make 

 good sprouts ; they are much decayed, and the few young 

 trees they produce have a poor support. They should be 

 replaced ; there is need for new stumps. 



Let us think over what we have learned about coppice 

 woods. Since we can use only trees which sprout well, 

 we cannot raise pine, spruce, and other conifers in this 

 way. As most trees in coppice woods should be cut before 

 they are forty years old, preferably when twenty or thirty 

 years old, these woods cannot furnish large trees, such as 

 would be needed for saw-logs to make boards for houses 

 and furniture. As to the work itself, we see that it is 

 quite simple. If a man had sixty acres of coppice woods 

 and wanted to cut some fuel and other timber every 

 winter, he might cut two acres every year, and in this 

 way cut the entire sixty-acre tract in thirty years. By 

 that time the two acres first cut would be thirty years old 

 and ready for the ax, and thus the cutting might go on 



