IMPROVEMENT FELLINGS 



111 



"It is necessary to break up these thickets by cutting a certain number of seedlings. 

 The term 'depressage' (literally loosening) explains well enough the nature of the work 

 which is done with a bill hook or pruning iron. To sum up, the 'depressage' is not a 

 freeing (degagement), but more nearly a first thinning executed in very young stands." 



There can be no question but that thinnings are profitable when the 

 trees to be cut can be sold. As a concrete example of increment the 

 following is cited for a fir stand in France : 



Thus thinnings, properly executed, increase average annual revenue 

 and the unit of value of the final product. On account of the larger 

 logs in another plot the price increment per meter was 17 cents. Cuif 

 believes that good thinnings will enable the State to decrease the ro- 

 tations. 



Huffel cites some authoritative figures for the growth per cent for a 

 spruce forest thinned and unthinned. Starting with 20 years the growth 

 per cent is 0.7 for both stands; at 50 years the unthinned stand was 

 growing at the rate of 4.3 per cent and the thinned at 4.5 per cent, at 100 

 years the growth per cent for the unthinned stand was 2.6 and for the 

 thinned 3 per cent. 



The losses througn poorly executed thinnings may be lasting. 

 Schaeffer 28 cited a case where a compartment was ruined for 30 years 

 because the officer in charge of the marking did not study the stand 

 curves in the working plan (see p. 216). He cited diameter limit mark- 

 ing as abominable. Important marking, according to French belief, 

 should always be executed under the direction of a trained officer. 



Improvement Fellings. French text-books do not refer to " improve- 

 ment fellings" as such. They describe freeings, cleanings, thinnings, and 

 accompanying cultural operations. But in State forest and communal 

 working plans there are always instructions under the head "Coupes 

 d' amelioration," as distinct from regeneration fellings and freeings. 



In the forest of Argon according to the original working plan, when 



28 Sylviculture Administrative. A. Schaeffer. Besangon, 1907. 



