I'.KITISII i i >kESl TRI i - 289 



Sylvicultitral Treatment of Sweet Chestnut can never be a 

 matter of first importance in Britain. The climate is not 

 sufficiently warm to yield such good results as are attained 

 with the cultivation of this tree on the Continent, on the 

 warmer parts of which, as for example in the Rhine valley, 

 it has great resemblance to the oak, but is more rapid of 

 development in crown, stem, and root-system, and even 

 retains its power of coppicing freely up to a hundred years 

 of age. In Britain, on the contrary, the cultivation of this 

 species can only take place in sunny, sheltered localities, in 

 woodlands skirting the sea-coast, in parks, c. But in 

 general it is too liable to danger from frost to hold its own 

 with the other hardier denizens almost naturalised within 

 our forests. The wine-districts of central Europe are the 

 chief localities where the sweet chestnut is cultivated along 

 with the oak as high forest or as standards in copse for the 

 supply of staves for casks, whilst as underwood and coppice 

 it yields excellent withes and hoops, as well as material for 

 vine-poles in the vineyards, its reproductive power being 

 stimulated and increased by cutting the stems flush with 

 the ground and covering the stools with earth. 



In the warmer tracts of southern England, wherever there 

 is any good local demand for sticks for hop or bean cultiva- 

 tion or similar petty requirements, coppice of chestnut may 

 yield very favourable returns on the sunnier exposures on 

 uplands where little danger need be apprehended from 

 frost ; as the out-turn of small material is very large, a rota- 

 tion of sixteen to eighteen yearly hags generally yields 

 poles varying from twenty to thirty-five feet in height, 

 according to the nature of the soil and the degree of warmth 

 enjoyed. Well-stocked pure chestnut coppice in Germany, 

 worked with a rotation of fifteen years, can yield J about 

 2,800 poles per acre averaging thirty feet in height and 3*2 

 1 Gayer, Der IValdlwu, 3rd edition, 1889, \\ 210. 



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