SOME NOTES ON GEEMAN FOKESTKY 21 



replacing in a large measure the old expensive style of using hemlock stud- 

 ding. It is universal in building construction in Germany. A large quantity 

 of this small spruce goes for the masts and spars of the extensive inland 

 water-way commerce of the Fatherland, as every old canal boat and lugger 

 owns a collapsible mast of some kind, besides a full complement of poling 

 spars. All the larger thinnings go for ship and derrick masts, trim, boards, 

 beams and the like. The boards are shipped untrimmed, the log being peeled 

 in the forest and sawn forthwith into planks which are shipped direct to 

 the cities in canal boats without any edge trimming. One sees in Berlin, 

 Frankfort, and the big industrial cities along the lower Ehine any quantity 

 of such boards being unloaded from the canal boats. The planing mill has 

 use for all their trimmings for kindling, etc., and the city can absorb such 

 forest waste at a far greater profit than if trimmed before shipment. 



THE HARDWOOD DISTRICTS 



Approaching Frankfort, the clayey nature of the Rhinish soils begins to 

 be manifest in hardwood stands, beginning with the big stand of pure oak 

 with some spruce sections near Hanau. From here on mixed forests become 

 the rule; not mixtures, but forests in which there will be a number of sec- 

 tions of oak, then spruce, then fir, then beech, etc. The hardwood regenera- 

 tion is almost entirely by seeding cut, as in France, I have no note of a 

 single planted beech forest and only one of oak. The stands are uniform 

 and the young sections thickly furred. There is of course not the necessity 

 nor the natural inclination towards absolutely straight trees as with the 

 conifers. 



In the lower Rhine districts where marl and clays form the soil, the 

 hardwood forests are very numerous, almost always with planted spruce 

 sections included. The higher spots in Westphalia, however, are left in kiefer 

 almost exclusively, probably from the scarcity of water as the soil is a good 

 loam capable of growing oak. Between Cologne and Dusseldorf I noted a 

 hardwood forest with a broad larch border of full-grown trees, showing that 

 that method of raising larch is at least eighty years in use. I never read 

 any great mention of it in German forest text books. 



Near Duisburg is a characteristic mixed forest which I had the pleasure 

 of examining on foot. First came a young oak stand of about thirty-five 

 year trees, all natural regeneration and all somewhat crooked. Next a number 

 of sections of hornbeam (characteristic of the north of France, not far from 

 here) ; and then there was considerable high ground devoted to a dozen sec- 

 tions of kiefer, all planted. The soil was a rich sandy loam and the under- 

 lying strata of clay in the lower parts doubtless made the selection of oak 

 and hornbeam logical. 



About three kilometers beyond Duisburg is another of these mixed forests. 

 First is about 200 acres of pure beech, a thirty -year stand; then beech mixed 

 with larch, the latter doing well in spite of having such a poor neighbor as 

 beech; then oak and spruce, the spruce being very poor, and finally forty 

 acres of kiefer on sandy soil. A locust border and the forest logging lanes 

 protected this forest where the railroad ran through it. 



