liXI J'.AKK. 



fully attests their value. This operation is commeuced when 

 the coppice has passed two-thirds of its rotation, species 

 other than oak and hadly developed oak-shoots, which grow 

 obliquely away from the clumps instead of vertically upwards, 

 being removed, and only the strongest shoots left. In the Oden- 

 wald such thinnings have been in force for 30 years, but they 

 are hardly known in many other places. 



(g) Maintenance of Standards. — In many woods when the cop- 

 pice is fclKd, seedlings or strong coppice-shoots of oak, birch, 

 Scotch pine, larch, hornbeam, &c., are left as standards and kept 

 for a second or third rotation of the underwood with the object 

 of producing inferior timber, as well as bark. There are oak- 

 bark coppices which present the appearance of coppice-with- 

 standards (Franconia and Wiirttemberg, &c.). Independently 

 of the fact that each standard kills the other shoots of the 

 same clump, and when it is felled a blank is caused in the wood, 

 the shade it throws on the surrounding clumps must retard 

 their development. Wherever, therefore, oak-bark coppice is 

 properly grown no standards are allowed. 



Schuberg shewed in his observations on the yield of oak-bark 

 coppice, in two coppices in which standards were maintained, 

 that shaded felling-areas yield bark not only inferior in quality 

 but in reduced volume, there being in the latter case a reduction 

 of 30 to 35%- Neubrand wisely remarks that if timber is 

 required, it is better to grow it in high forest rather than 

 impair the quality and volumetric yield of bark. 



(h) Accessory Usages. — It should be thoroughly undi'rstood 

 that it is quite unjustitiable to remove leaf-litter from oak-bark 

 woods, which frequently grow on soil not naturally rich but 

 protected by the shade of the wood, its whole strength being 

 required for the coppice. As a deplorable proof of this state- 

 ment may be cited the wretched condition of hundreds of acres 

 of coppice belonging to municipalities and private owners. 

 The soil of woods thus nialtrrated, by depriving it of dead 

 leaves for litter, becomes so rapidly impoverished as hardly 

 to yield half tlu- returns from a similarly situated wood where 

 the litter is i)reKerved. Similarly, pasture and grass-cutting 

 should not be allowed in oak-bark woods, for the trampling of 

 the cattle and the sickle of the grass-cutter have disastrous 



