CHAP, viii.] Formation of Woods 177 



higher demands are made as regards sylvicultural knowledge 

 than when total clearance with artificial reproduction is the 

 method followed ; and, when seed years are apt to be irregular, 

 it often taxes the ingenuity of the manager of large woodlands 

 to maintain the annual fall of timber without over-stepping 

 the limits dictated by prudence with regard to the gradual 

 clearance preliminary to the seed-felling. 



It has frequently been objected to natural reproduction that 

 the growth of the young crop is at first much slower than in 

 plantations; but such objectors evidently do not attach suffi- 

 cient weight to the quantitative, the qualitative, and especially 

 the financial, increment which takes place simultaneously on 

 the parent standard trees before the final clearance of the 

 mature crop. 



There is one great drawback of plantations, as compared 

 with crops formed either naturally or by sowing, which seems 

 inherent from the larger amount of growing-space enjoyed by 

 each individual plant that is, an undeniable tendency to 

 forked or branching growth. This was conclusively proved 

 by the experimental section of the Forestry Department at 

 Munich University in 1885 to 1887 ; and it has been also con- 

 firmed for the tropics by my own observations in the extensive 

 Teak plantations of Burma. The reason is obvious. As the 

 individual struggle is not at first so great in plantations as 

 in sowings or in natural regenerations, it more frequently 

 happens that one or other of the side-buds throws out a shoot 

 almost equal in size to the axial, true leading-shoot ; and as 

 years advance the fork becomes more developed, thereby 

 reducing the value of the timber through spoiling the bole 

 for technical purposes. This tendency may best be observed in 

 coniferous forests, especially of Spruce, where three, four, and 

 even five definite and more or less successful efforts at forked 

 growth are often distinctly recognizable. The same influences 

 are also at work in other kinds of trees. They tend to dissipate 

 in ramification the energy in growth which it is the great aim 



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