BRITISH FOREST TREES 203 



stem can have the fullest enjoyment of light and air ; thirty 

 or forty standards per acre will again form almost close 

 canopy by the time the second crop of beech attains 

 maturity, so that a larger number of oaks per acre would 

 bring no benefit so far as the oak crop is concerned, and 

 would only militate against the development of the beech 

 underwood. 



The principal ruling species with which oak is usually 

 associated as a subordinate, occurring either in groups, or 

 patches, or rows, or merely as individuals scattered here and 

 there, is undoubtedly the beech, which has most in common 

 with its natural habit of growth. No other species of forest 

 tree supplies so well as it the soil-protecting qualities in 

 which the oak is deficient, and none is at the same time 

 able to thrive so well under the side-shade thrown by the 

 usually older and quicker-growing oaks. The less the pro- 

 portion in which the latter is admixed, the greater must be 

 the attention paid and the assistance given to it during all 

 the operations of thinning out, for where it is scattered 

 singly, it is not sufficient that it should be merely domi- 

 nating along with the beech, it must be unquestionably pre- 

 dominant over its neighbours, otherwise it has a weakly 

 expansion of crown not suitable for its retention to the full 

 term of maturity ; an insufficiency of coronal development 

 is more likely to lead to stag-headedness than to expansion 

 of the crown when such trees are freely and fully exposed 

 to light, air, and sunshine on the beech being harvested. 

 Its treatment as a subordinate of the beech has, however, 

 already above been dealt with in detail (see pp. 170 to 174). 

 Oak is less frequently to be found growing along with 

 spruce, except in places where the latter has had to be intro- 

 duced to fill up blanks in the natural reproduction of beech 

 forests, or where the soil has deteriorated so far that the 

 cultivation of a crop of spruce instead of beech seems pre- 



