June, 1942] University of New Hampshire 17 



Stands consisting- of dense, even-aged, often immature, spruce 

 and fir, and of a mixture of spruce, sugar maple, beech and other hard- 

 woods are difficult to regenerate. It may not be possible to maintain 

 pulpwood species on sites particularly adapted to hardwoods without 

 great difficulty. In all cases, virgin forest composition should be the 

 guide for silviculture. Although it may appear economically sound 

 in the short run to attempt pulpwood production, doing so may lead 

 to disastrous results over a long-time period. 



In the dense, even-aged, second growth spruce and fir stands, 

 advance reproduction is usually lacking. This situation is very com- 

 mon on farms in the Colebrook area. Best results will be obtained by 

 a shelterwood cutting, removing from one-fourth to one-half of the 

 trees. The first cut should include inferior and slow-growing trees, 

 especially fir, leaving the best trees for continued growth. Once re- 

 production of a desirable character and size has been established, the 

 remaining old growth may be cut. Care must be taken to prevent 

 windthrow in these stands during the intervening period. It may be 

 necessary to make a series of light cuttings, removing only a small 

 portion of the total volume each time in order properly to protect the 

 trees left for additional grow^th. 



Where spruce grows with hardwoods, the aim of management 

 should be to maintain the mixture. It may be desirable in some in- 

 stances to increase the proportion of spruce. This proportion can be 

 increased by removing the hardwoods several years before cutting the 

 softwoods. Such a procedure accomplishes the two-fold purpose of 

 encouraging conifer reproduction and stimulating growth of the mer- 

 chantable spruce stems. On many of the farm woodlands, the present 

 hardwood is of inferior quality and should be removed in this manner 

 for fuelwood. In the future, attention should be given to raising 

 better qualit}^ hardwood and spruce on a somewhat longer rotation to 

 produce sawlogs. Weeding, thinning and improvement cutting during 

 the rotation period should produce a quality product at maturity. The 

 inferior trees should be removed in all these operations. Except in 

 weeding, they will yield fuelwood for home use. 



HARDWOOD 



The hardwood stands of the area are composed mainly of yellow 

 birch, sugar maple, red maple and beech. Occasionally white ash is 

 in the mixture. There also are stands of aspen and paper birch which 

 have followed clear-cutting. The objective of management should 

 be to improve the quality of the stand and to build up a larger growing 

 stock so that products will be available for market each year or at 

 regular short intervals. The accomplishment of this objective will 

 mean following certain cultural practices and changing the type of 

 cutting now prevalent. 



In general, cutting should be so light as to create no radical dis- 

 turbance in the forest cover. A single-tree-selection method of log- 

 ging will be the most satisfactory. In the farm woodlands, where the 



