30 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF PLAN [CH. 



constituted growing stock is the principal thing aimed at, and 

 regular working and full production will not be possible till 

 after the end of the first rotation at the earliest. Meanwhile the 

 yield will be based not on any abstract theories as to normal 

 increment but on an estimate of the volume of standing old 

 stock that has to be cleared off the ground period by period. 



Lastly we have the case of our English woodland estates, where 

 in most instances there is no assured continuity of management, 

 and no very definite or stable object of management. A working- 

 plan here will hardly touch the theories of forest management, 

 but will rather be a common-sense plan of operations, with a 

 progressive annual programme for the clearing and re-stocking 

 of successive portions of the ground as rapidly as possible, so 

 arranged that the receipts from clearings may cover the annual 

 expenditure in re-planting. 



31. General and special plan. 



Whatever method of silvicultural treatment is to be adopted, 

 the main provisions of the working-plan will take the form of 

 a general working scheme followed by a special plan. 



The general scheme will apply to the whole rotation, which, 

 in high-forest, may be 100 or 200 years, and will embrace in 

 outline the whole cycle of operations extending over that 

 time. 



The special plan will refer to a period generally of between 

 ten and thirty years, and all the detailed prescriptions of the 

 plan will remain in force only for this period. In the case of 

 even-aged high-forest, one period, that is usually about twenty 

 or thirty years, will be taken as the duration of the prescriptions 

 of the plan ; and the same period would be taken in the case of 

 a plan of conversion to even-age high-forest. In high-forest of 

 mixed ages, the period chosen for the duration of the special 

 plan would be one felling-cycle, or, if the felling-cycle were very 

 short of not more than ten years, for instance two felling- 

 cycles might be taken. In the case of coppice the general working 

 scheme and the special plan would practically coincide, and 

 the duration of the plan would be for one rotation of the 

 coppice. 



