490 APPENDIX 



wood, 120 years. The system is not followed mechanically, but vigorous trees are, 

 rather, left standing longer without, however, practicing this to so great an extent as 

 is customary in many German forests. 



As to the number of trees per hectare in the several age classes, tolerably definite 

 rules were given. The closeness of the stands is astonishing. In the forest at Blois the 

 numbers in the various age classes, for the annual cut, amounted to: Baliveaux total, 

 287; per hectare, 50 (20 per acre). Modernes total, 81; per hectare, 14 (6 per acre). 

 Anciens total, 34; per hectare, 6 (2 per acre). 



According to this, very light cuttings are made. The 25- to 30-year-old baliveaux 

 contain only a very small volume; even the modcmes are mainly trees with a content 

 of less than 35 cubic feet. And the few anciens with about 35 to 70 cubic feet could 

 have no great influence upon the total volume of wood taken from the entire cutting 

 area. In the cutting areas which we saw, in which final cuttings had been made not 

 long since, the entire overwood was estimated at 1,410 to 1,765 cubic feet. It is true 

 that many advocates of the French system of forest management recommend a larger 

 amount of overwood capital. But actually the maximum amount retained at the 

 beginning of the rotation amounts to only 1,145 cubic feet per acre. This is far less 

 than correspondents testify is the practice in the German management of coppice with 

 standards. 



The hospital forest of Blois does not vary much, in its composition and in the pro- 

 portion of overwood, from the figures which are cited for the entire country. Accord- 

 ing to the department of agriculture's statistics the following relative figures per hectare 

 were obtained for the fiscal year (Wirtschaftsjahr) 1876: 



In individual parts of the country there are, of course, great differences. Individual 

 conservations (districts) (Dijon, Rouen, Nancy, Amiens, etc.), contain over 100 baliveaux 

 and over 30 modernes per hectare (40 and 12, respectively, per acre). 



The details of the management of the coppice with standards belonging to the State 

 and administered by the State are worked out in accordance with the fundamental 

 principles of the system far more systematically than in Germany. Here it is always 

 looked upon as a difficult sort of management which makes special demands on the 

 tact and activity of the organizing and executive officers. "Im Mittelwalde der Zu- 

 kunft," is observed in the papers of the convention of German foresters at Dresden in 

 1889 "rrmsz die intensivste Bewirtschaftung, reine Baumwirtschaft Anwendung findem, 

 wenn derselbe den an seine Produkticil'dt, an seine Geldertrage und Nachhaltigkeit zu stel- 

 lenden Aufforderungen entsprechen soil" ("In the coppice with standards of the future 

 the most intensive management, pure forestry, must find application if the same is to 

 meet the demands placed upon it, in its productivity, its money revenues, and its per- 

 manence"). Nevertheless, it will only be very seldom that such a goal will be sought 

 and attained in the future. It leads to a very large capital of overwood and to the 

 death or degeneration of the underwood. Such a tendency results in a gradual chang- 

 ing of the coppice with standards to a regulated selection forest which is a yet better 

 system of management for attaining the objects proposed. In most German forest 

 regions this change has already commenced; in Prussia the coppice with standards is 

 scarcely represented at present. Its distinguishing characteristic, the reserving of 



