FOREST EXPLOITATION. 163 



reduce the work at this period of pressure, there are 

 exploited in advance what are called winter woods. There 

 results from this practice from the first that the stump cut 

 in spring loses, through the escape which takes place over 

 the large wound produced by exploitation, a great part of 

 the material which it held in reserve, which is exhausted 

 by the month of August, when with the second sap there 

 are produced some buds destined to replace the felled 

 perches. Then the stumps of other kinds of trees, which 

 have not been subjected to this cause of alteration produce 

 shoots which have, over those from the stumps of the oak, 

 the double advantage of being more vigorous, and of having 

 a start of some months. It is evident that these combined 

 causes must produce successively the disappearance of the 

 oak and the multiplication of other kinds of trees. This 

 is what experience establishes. On the more fertile soils, 

 where reproduction by seed goes on rapidly, the effect is 

 less rapidly produced than in dry and poor soils ; but in 

 all forests treated as coppice the final result will be the 

 same, and this will be the replacement of the oak by trees 

 of secondary importance, or by heath plants. 



' Is it necessary to conclude from this that the time has 

 come to renounce entirely the treatment of forest as copse, 

 or at any rate the treatment of them with a view to the 

 production of bark? That would certainly be an exag- 

 geration of the consequences of these observations. Private 

 proprietors can hardly afford to maintain timber forests ; 

 and oak bark is a product of such importance that it 

 would be difficult to give it up. 



' But every forest proprietor should be well assured that 

 the treatment of woods as coppice is a mode of treatment 

 altogether artificial, one incompatable with the perpetua- 

 tion of the crops, and one that cannot be maintained 

 excepting on condition of replacing in due proportion the 

 trees of which repeated exploitations occasions the death. 

 When through the exhaustion of the soil these replace- 

 ments become impracticable, and there remains but one 

 remedy, that is to abandon the regime of copse, and substi- 



