REAL AND NORMAL FORESTS COMPARED. 24l 



tending of the growing woods. More especially as regards the 

 regulation of cuttings, care must be taken that all woods, 

 which have a poor increment, are utilised at an early date 

 and replaced by vigorous young woods. Next, a proper 

 proportion and distribution of age classes must be aimed at, 

 so that each wood can be cut over when ripe, without endanger- 

 ing thereby other adjoining woods. Only in this way is it 

 possible to avoid loss of increment in the future, due to the 

 premature cutting of vigorous woods, or to the belated cutting 

 of incompletely stocked or diseased woods. 



The establishment of a normal proportion amongst the 

 several age classes (or normal series of age gradations) fully 

 insures a regular sustained yield, provided the increment is 

 not interfered with. With these two conditions in the normal 

 state, the third, or growing stock, must also be normal. The 

 latter, in its numerical aspect, is valuable as a means to judge 

 the capacity of a forest to yield a fixed return for a certain 

 period of time ; but it seems a procedure of doubtful expediency, 

 to begin by establishing the numerically normal state of the 

 growing stock, because it can exist while the forest is highly 

 abnormal in other respects. 



A forest, consisting of a normal series of age gradations and 

 worked according to the system of a sustained annual yield, 

 is, after all, nothing else but a number of age gradations, each 

 of which is worked under the system of intermittent yields ; 

 by adding together the intermittent yields of the several age 

 gradations, the sustained annual yield of the whole series is 

 obtained. It stands, therefore, to reason, that the best method 

 of regulating the management of a forest is that, which con- 

 siders first the special requirements of each wood and then 

 adds up the cuttings, which have been determined on during 

 this process. In this way, a healthy treatment can be insured 

 to every part of the forest, leading to a healthy treatment of 

 the whole. How this can be accomplished will be shown in 

 Part IT. of this volume. 



