206 BRITISH FOREST TREES 



generally comes cheaper than planting, even if small plants 

 be used, so that in a good acorn year sowing is preferable 

 on soil that does not require any extensive or costly 

 preparation for the reception of the seed. Thickets of 

 seedlings often have advantages over those formed by plant- 

 ing, as the development of the predominating classes takes 

 place sooner, and makes the earlier clearings and thinnings 

 easier to carry out, whilst the returns yielded in such cases 

 are obtained earlier, are more remunerative, and recur more 

 frequently. On the light or prepared soils where sowing is 

 preferable, the fact of the tap-root not being interfered with 

 in any way, enables the seedlings to develop more normally 

 and regularly than when more or less injury is done to it 

 in the operation of transplanting. Wherever acorns are not 

 plentiful, or where it is advisable to give the oak some 

 advantage in growth over its neighbours, planting deserves 

 the preference, the choice of the size of the transplants 

 varying greatly according to the circumstances of each case. 

 Natural Reproduction by Seed can be accomplished in 

 mature pure forests of oak, or where it is the ruling species 

 in mixed forests, as in many parts of northern Germany, 

 France, and Austria, simply by the removal of the sub- 

 ordinate species, or by a seed-felling made during the 

 mast-year and confined to the small-girthed oaks, so that 

 on the average the number of trees will be about fifty to 

 sixty per acre. But as old oak forests, and mixed forests 

 with oak as principal species, have usually only a patchy 

 growth of mature trees to show, the disposition of the parent 

 standards over the area is seldom so regular as in the case of 

 the beech. The probability of a seed-year can be foretold, 

 although not so plainly as in the case of the beech, by 

 the larger, swollen appearance of the future flowering buds 

 during autumn and winter, signs chiefly to be met with after 

 warm summers favouring the formation of starchy reserves. 



