BRITISH FOREST TREES 163 



themselves were not actually declared communal, village, 

 or corporation forests, and rights of user of many kinds 

 had to be satisfied, such as the delivery of timber for 

 building and for fuel, right of driving in herds of swine for 

 pannage and cattle for pasturage, right of extraction of 

 dead leaves for manure for the fields, &:c. With the increase 

 of population, and the restriction of the areas under forest, 

 the time arrived in many places where, notwithstanding the 

 soil-improving qualities of the beech, it has not been able 

 to maintain the productive capacity of the soil when the 

 natural covering of dead foliage has been stripped and 

 utilised as manure for neighbouring fields. Bereft of its 

 leafy mantle, and incapable of otherwise producing the 

 humus or mould necessary for the retention of soil-moisture, 

 and both directly and indirectly active in the formation of 

 soil and the preparation of nutrients for the benefit of the 

 timber crop, the growth of the beech woods began ulti- 

 mately to show signs that the soil was becoming exhausted ; 

 natural reproduction became feebler and less satisfactory, 

 and some less exacting crop, usually spruce, had to be 

 formed in place of beech, in order to avoid further deteriora- 

 tion of the soil through inferior and patchy growth of 

 beech alternating with patches of self-sown softwoods. In 

 other places, in many of the state forests and in private 

 woodlands, purely financial reasons have led to the trans- 

 formation of beech woods into coniferous forests, as the 

 long period of natural reproduction, the poor prices obtain- 

 able for the smaller assortments of timber forming a con- 

 siderable portion of the crop harvested when reproduction 

 is commenced, and the relatively less remunerative prices for 

 the largest dimensions of beech as compared with spruce or 

 ! pine, were all naturally taken into account wherever 

 existing forests could legally be transformed. In addition 

 to that, with the improved methods of communication 



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