146 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN FORESTERS 



tinueas areas of highly inflammable seedlings. It is probably true, also, 

 that lightning damage, with its attendant fire menace, is increased. 



In Europe the history of forest management has gone through the 

 stages of extensive selection cutting, leading to systematized shelter- 

 wood or selection methods ( Schirmschlagf orm, Femelschlagform, Plen- 

 terschlagform), with many variations. It is highly significant that in 

 Germany these methods, practised as they were on large areas (Gross- 

 schlagwirtschaft), proved so uniformly unsatisfactory that they were 

 abandoned in favor of clear cutting and artificial regeneration (Kahl- 

 schlagbetrieb), which characterized German forestry in the nineteenth 

 century. The tremendous expense and manifest drawbacks to this 

 method (deteriorating soil and yield, insect and fungus ravages, etc.) 

 have led the foremost German foresters back to a systematized selection 

 system but one based on small areas (Wirtschaft der kleinsten Flache) 

 in contrast to the large area management of former times with natural 

 regeneration and well-distributed age classes, but with stands approxi- 

 mately even aged. 



This last requirement is the result of dearly bought experience in the 

 old shelterwood and selection cuttings, where much of the laboriously 

 achieved reproduction was destroyed in removing the larger trees which 

 had been left. Can we expect better results when the time comes for a 

 "second cutting" 30 or 50 years after the first ? 



In his "Grundlagen der Raumlichen Ordnung im Walde," * Professor 

 Wagner, of Tubingen, describes a method of selection border cuttings 

 (Blendersaumschlag) which offers a way to avoid these strong disad- 

 vantages of a "straight" selection or shelterwood cutting. In its essen- 

 tials this method is a progressive selection-strip cutting from north to 

 south, which utilizes the mature products in selection cuttings, at the 

 same time securing natural regeneration of the forest. The strips or 

 "borders" run east and west ; they are narrow, since this is the most fav- 

 orable to natural regeneration ; they progress from north to south, since 

 tie closed, mature stand on the south side affords the maximum protec- 

 tion from drouth, wind, frost, snow, and the like without preventing the 

 free access of precipitation to the regenerated area. The progress of the 

 cutting and of the regeneration depends primarily on the degree to which 

 reproduction has been secured and the needs of that reproduction. This 

 progress of regeneration over the cutting area can be likened to the read- 

 ing of a printed page, where the eye sweeps from the top to the bottom, 

 line for line, steadily withal, yet halting occasionally until some difficult 

 passage has been mastered. 



* Second edition, 1911, H. Laupp, publisher, Tubingen, Wiirttemberg, Ger- 

 many. 



