194 BRITISH FOREST TREKS 



exhausted soil. Even on the best classes of soil, therefore, 

 when pure forests of oak have been formed, they are usually 

 thinned out when the chief growth in length is completed, 

 and after being underplanted with beech, hornbeam, silver fir, 

 or spruce, are then allowed to develop till the latter grows up 

 to maturity. Except on such exceptionally favourable soils, 

 the oak is usually grown in high timber forests along with 

 the beech, the relative proportion in the admixture of the 

 species being mainly dependent on the quality of the soil- 

 In moister, low-lying tracts it is also grown in admixture with 

 the alder, and in localities subject to frost along with aspen 

 and birch, which however require to be removed as soon as 

 they have performed their duty as nurses, and before they 

 begin to interfere with the normal development of the oak. 

 No tree is so well adapted to assist the development and to 

 supply the deficiencies of the oak as the beech, which can 

 thrive fairly well under the light shade of the former ; but at 

 every stage of growth care must be taken to provide the oak 

 with some advantage as regards growth in height, as it is 

 otherwise apt to be weak in branch development, and con- 

 sequently in growth in girth, when it is hemmed in by beech 

 of equal, or nearly equal, height. 



The oak, particularly the pedunculate oak, is eminently 

 suited for standards in copse, i.e. over coppice, but care must 

 be taken to train up the different classes of standards only 

 from among seedling growth, and not from stool-shoots. As 

 this method tends to induce excessive branch-development, 

 and as the removal of branches on a large scale is costly, 

 and also affects the quality of the timber for technical 

 purposes, besides offering unnecessary opportunities for the 

 entrance of fungus spores into the wounds, the same object 

 can be better and more effectively attained by the formation 

 of pure forests of oak, and then underplanting them after 

 thinning out at about seventy years of age ; longer straighter 



