160 BRITISH FOREST TREES 



growth in height has culminated, but it is generally worked 

 with a rotation of about 90 120 years before being 

 gradually reproduced by seed over a period of fifteen to 

 twenty years. In Germany the great bulk of beech is used for 

 fuel, it being the wood most prized for domestic heating pur- 

 poses. But when there is a good demand and a fair market 

 for large assortments of this timber, a forest is cleared at 

 seventy to eighty years of age, and about eighteen or twenty- 

 two of the best trees per acre are left as standards to widen 

 rapidly in girth, and then be cleared off at the next fall 

 along with the reproduced portion of the forest some seventy 

 to eighty years later on. 



Seed-years are foretold by the thickening of the flower- 

 buds in the previous autumn ; good ones do not occur 

 more than once every three to five years, and really abun- 

 dant mast-years are, like good vintages, unfortunately of 

 somewhat infrequent occurrence. On favourable soils and 

 situations there is seldom lack of seed for natural reproduc- 

 tion, though on poor soils, and in localities exposed to late 

 frosts, the work of regeneration has often to be carried out 

 with seed obtained elsewhere. 



About 2,000 beech-nuts without husks are contained in 

 one pound, and a germinative power of 50 per cent, is con- 

 sidered satisfactory in experiments for testing the quality. 

 The seed ripens and falls in the autumn after flowering. 

 Where it is necessary to harvest the mast till the following 

 spring, it must be kept cool, airy, and well covered, and 

 runs a danger of becoming heated on the one hand or dried 

 up on the other. Seed kept longer than till the spring after 

 its ripening, cannot be relied on to germinate at all satisfac- 

 torily. 



Its capacity for reproduction by stool-shoots is on the 

 whole not great ; when once the bark has thickened and 

 hardened, the dormant or adventitious buds become much 



