EXPLOITATION 171 



* I do not think we have much to learn from the 

 Germans with regard to the planting and rearing of 

 young trees, but it is with regard to the best methods of 

 managing groups of plantations or masses of forests that I 

 consider we may with advantage take a leaf out of their 

 book. For instance, I would certainly introduce in a ten- 

 tative manner, and at first on a very small scale, their 

 system of rotation, clearing, and periods, and endeavour to 

 bring forward a second crop before the first is off the 

 ground, encourage the growth of the better descriptions, 

 keep down the less valuable, and to improve our " Planter- 

 betrieb," or selection of single trees to be felled, so as 

 gradually to arrive at groups of trees of the same age, 

 description, and class, and eventually at blocks worked in 

 rotation, and containing always a sufficient stock of crop 

 coming on to meet the requirements of future years. To 

 arrive at all this the most careful observations and experi- 

 ments will have to be made as to the rate of growth and 

 yield per acre of each description of forest, the condition 

 under which trees grow best and form the most timber, 

 some requiring close and some open planting, some nurses 

 and some not, some, like the oak, requiring a great deal of 

 light, whilst others, like the beech, do well for many years 

 in shade. All these points, and many more, demand atten- 

 tion, and till they are settled we shall be merely groping 

 in the dark/ 



By Varrene de Feuille there had been supplied long 

 before, information in regard to the best means of obtain- 

 ing from a coppice wood the greatest possible quantity of 

 produce : and by implication how to obtain from a mixed 

 wood the largest possible supply of firewood after having 

 provided for a supply of timber; or what may be con- 

 sidered the converse of this how to secure from it the 

 largest possible supply of timber, together with the largest 

 possible supply of firewood. And by Reaumur information 

 had been supplied as to the best means of obtaining from 

 a timber forest the largest supply of timber of the best 



