SihicuUural Practice. 103 



Deciduous Coniferous 



Per cent. Per cent. 



Total Forest 32.5 67.5 



High Forest 18.4 60.1 



Selection Forest 2.3 7.4 



Coppice 6.8 



Coppice with standards 5. 



Coniferous forest, of which 68% is pine and 30% 

 spruce, prevails in Eastern and Middle Grermany, de- 

 ciduous forest, of which 20% is oak, the balance princi- 

 pally beech, in the West and South. 



Coppice and coppice with standards are mostly in 

 private hands as well as the coniferous selection forest, 

 the State forests being almost entirely high forest, i. e. 

 seed forest, other than under selection method. 



c. Methods of Improving the Crop. The credit of 

 having first systematically formulated the practice of 

 thinnings under the name of Durchforstung {ior the first 

 thinning), Durchplenterung (for the later thinnings), 

 belongs to Hartig, although the practice of such thin- 

 nings had been known and applied here and there before 

 his time. He confined himself mainly to the removal of 

 the undesirable species, dead and dying, suppressed and 

 damaged trees, being especially emphatic in his advice 

 not to interrupt the crown cover. Excepting the early 

 weeding or improvement cuttings these thinnings were 

 not to b^n until the fiftieth to seventieth year in the 

 broad-leaved forest, but in conifers in the twentieth to 

 thirtieth year. 



The first attempt to explain on a biological basis the 

 process and effect of thinning was made by Spath in a 

 special contribution (1802). Cotta, in his Silviculture, 



