NATURE 



265 



THE TEACHING OF FORESTRY} 

 A Manual of Forestry. By William Schlich, CLE., 

 Ph.D. Vol.11. (London: Bradbury, Agnew, and Co., 

 1889.) 



IN a loop of the Main river in Lower Franconia, east of 

 Aschaffenburg, rises an extensive mountainous coun- 

 try, clothed with almost unbroken forest of singular beauty I 

 and of enormous value. It is the Spessart, in old times ; 

 known as the home and haunt of great highway robbers, 

 but also known from time immemorial as the home of the j 

 best oak timber in Germany. The red sandstone of the j 

 Trias, which everywhere is the underlying rock in this j 

 extensive forest country, makes a light sandy loam, which, j 

 where deep, is capable of producing tall, cylindrical, well- ! 

 shaped stems. Having grown up, while young, in a 

 densely crowded wood, the oak here has cleared itself of 

 side branches at an early age. Hence these clean straight 

 stems, which in the case of spruce, silver fir, and other 

 forest trees, may justly be said to be the rule, but which 

 the oak does not produce, save under these and similarly 

 favourable circumstances. The species here is Quercus 

 sessiliflora : this species does not form pure forests, but is 

 always found mixed with other trees, the hornbeam, the 

 beech, and on the lower slopes of the western Schwarz- 

 wald, the silver fir. In the Spessart, the beech is asso- 

 ciated with the oak, in the same manner as the bamboo 

 is the chief associate of the teak tree in Burma. 



In publishing his manual of forestry, the author 

 wished in the first instance to place in the hands of 

 the students at the Coopers Hill Forest School a hand- 

 book to facilitate their studies. That Forest School was, 

 it may be remembered, established in 1885, in connection 

 with the Royal Indian Engineering College at the same 

 place, in order to give the needful professional training to 

 young Englishmen who desired to enter the Indian Forest 

 Department. Accordingly, when the first volume of that 

 manual appeared in 1889, it was natural that some, who 

 took a strong interest in the progress of forest manage- 

 ment in the British Indian Empire, were surprised that 

 the book did not deal with Indian trees, and that its 

 teaching related to the oak, the beech, the Scotch pine, 

 and other trees of Europe. By some of these zealous j 

 friends of Indian forestry the book was pronounced a 

 failure, because it did not treat of Indian forest trees. 



The principles which guide the forester in the proper 

 treatment of his woods are the same all over the world, 

 in India as well as in Europe. But while the application 

 of these principles to the treatment of Indian forests is 

 not more than thirty-five years old, the methodical and 

 systematic treatment of European forests is of old stand- 

 ing, and has stood the test of experience. In the teak 

 forests of Burma, the bamboo has a position similar to that 

 of the beech in the oak forests of the Spessart. Oak and 

 teak are both trees with comparatively light foliage. Pure 

 woods of these species, while young, are sufficiently dense 

 to shade the ground, whereas at an advanced age the 

 wood gets thin, the canopy light, and the result is that 



' See Nature, vol. xli. p. I2i. 



NO. 1 1 34, VOL. 44] 



grass and weeds appear, and that by the action of sun and 

 wind the soil hardens and is less fertile than the loose 

 porous soil, which is shaded by dense masses of foliage. 

 Hence the advantage of associates, which, like the beech 

 in Europe and the bamboo in Burma, shade the ground 

 with their dense foliage and enrich it by the abundant 

 fall of their leaves. But it is not only the condition of the 

 ground which is improved by these useful associates. Teak 

 and oak have this specialty also in common, that, when 

 growing up alone, their stems, instead of running up into 

 clean cylindrical boles, are apt to throw out side branches, 

 which greatly impair the market value of the log. But 

 when growing up in dense masses with their natural 

 associates, these latter, crowding in as they do on all 

 sides, around the oak in the Spessart and the teak in 

 Burma, prevent the development of side branches and 

 thus produce clean and regularly shaped stems. 



In these and many other ways are the associates of the 

 teak and of the oak useful friends, so to speak. Under 

 certain circumstances, however, and at certain periods of 

 their life, they are dangerous enemies to their more 

 valuable companions. On the sandstone of the Spessart 

 and elsewhere, the beech, as a rule, has a more vigorous 

 growth than the oak ; it gets the upper hand, and, unless 

 it is cut back or thinned out in time, the oak, if both are 

 growing up in an even mixture, has no chance. The 

 bamboo is even more formidable as an enemy of the 

 young teak tree. Though the teak may have had a long 

 start ; if a crop of bamboos — either the shoots of old 

 rhizomes, or perhaps the result of general seeding of the 

 old bamboo forest, cleared away to make room for the 

 teak— springs up among it, the teak is doomed. As 

 soon as the rhizomes of the bamboo have acquired 

 sufficient strength, they produce, within a few weeks, 

 during the rains, such a profusion of full-sized shoots, 

 say 20 to 30 feet high, that the young teak trees among 

 them are throttled and extinguished. 



The similarity in the relations of teak and bamboo in 

 Burma, and of oak and beech in the Spessart, has led 

 foresters in both countries to devise similar arrangements 

 for the regeneration of these forests. I n the S pessart, when 

 the old timber in a compartment of the forest is cut, the 

 best places for the growth of the oak are selected, and the 

 oak, which here sells at the rate of from 2s. to y. a cubic 

 foot for sound and well-shaped pieces, is sown on soil 

 most suitable for its development ; while the beech, the 

 timber of which only fetches about one-fifth of that amount, 

 is allowed to reproduce naturally from self-sown seedlings 

 over the rest of the area. Among the oak also a certain 

 but small proportion of beech springs up, and even where 

 pure oak woods may be the result of these proceedings, it 

 will not be difficult, when they are sufficiently advanced, 

 to introduce such a proportion of beech as will secure 

 their satisfactory development. In the same way in 

 Burma, selected areas are cleared for the growth of teak 

 in the original forest, the clearance being effected and 

 the teak planted with the aid of that rude mode of shifting 

 cultivation, known as the Toungya system. 



Many other instances might be quoted, in which similar 

 practices have developed in the rearing and tending of 

 woods in Europe and in India. The principles of sylvi- 

 culture are the same everywhere, and the application 

 of these principles to the treatment of woods in different 



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