32 FORESTRY IN POLAND. 



paring the ground to receive the seed ; 2nd r allowing the 

 seed to germinate as it falls ; 3rd, affording sufficient light 

 to the young seedlings. The finest trees are, as a rule, 

 left standing, with the two-fold object of depositing the 

 seed and sheltering the young trees as they come up. If 

 there be a good seed year and sufficient rain, the ground 

 should be thickly covered with seedlings within two or 

 three years after the first clearing, Nature being assisted 

 when necessary by hand sowing, transplanting from 

 patches where the seedlings have come up very quickly, 

 to the thinner spots, and other measures of forest craft. 

 When the ground is pretty well covered the old trees are 

 felled and carefully removed, so as to do as little damage 

 as possible to the new crop, and the block recommences 

 life, so to speak, nothing farther being done until the first 

 thinning. The above is briefly the whole process of 

 natural reproduction, which is the simplest and most 

 economical of all systems, and especially applicable to 

 forests of deciduous trees. The period between the first 

 or preparatory clearing and the final clearing varies from 

 ten to thirty years, the more gradual and protracted 

 method being now most in favour, particularly in the 

 Black Forest, where the old trees are removed so gradually 

 that there can scarcely be said to be any clearing at all, the 

 new crop being well advanced before the last of the parent 

 trees is removed. This approximates to "felling by selec- 

 tion," [Jardmage], which is the primitive system of working 

 forests in all countries, under which, in its rude form, the 

 forester proceeds without method, selecting such timber as 

 suits him, irrespective of its relation to the forest incre- 

 ment. Reduced to system, it has certain advantages, 

 especially in mountain forests, in which, if the steep slopes 

 be laid bare area by area, avalanches, landslips, and disas- 

 trous torrents might result, but the annual output under 

 this system is never more than two-thirds of that obtained 

 l>y the rotation system, and there are other objections 

 which it is unnecessary to detail in this paper, which have 

 caused it to be rightly condemned, and now-a-days only 



