514 fip:ld-ckops in forests. 



a loosened soil niuch better than when uothinfjf is done to the 

 soil, or it is only sli<j:htly worked. If without growing field 

 crops the soil were as thoroughly trenched on clear-cut areas or 

 for natural regeneration, the sowing and planting of the forest 

 plants as carefully eftected, as fine plants used and the ground 

 weeded as diligently as when field crops are grown, even better 

 sylvicultural results would be attained than in combination with 

 field-crops. As the peasant pays for the cultivation of the 

 ground, the demands on the forest cash-box for the simul- 

 taneous or subsequent stocking with forest plants are consider- 

 ably reduced; to the extent then of supplying a cheap and 

 beneficial mode of cultivating the ground, the admixture of field- 

 crops is an advantage to forests. 



2. ])(()ifierH to thr Forest. 



The principal danger caused by field-crops to the forest is 

 the consequent reduction in fertility of the soil. The crops take 

 from the soil those very substances which are generally deficient 

 (potash, nitrates and phosphates), and these materials are 

 required just as much by woody plants as by those grown by the 

 fiirmer, the latter merely requiring them in larger quantities 

 than the former. The agricultural plants, however, grow 

 merely in the surface soil, which owing to the decomposition 

 of the weeds forming the soil-covering and of the humus from 

 dead leaves, Sec, and to the cultivation it has received, is more 

 or less richly supplied with assimilable nutritive salts. 



The field-crop undoubtedly robs the surface-soil of a consider- 

 able amount of nutritive matter, and the more so the longer the 

 land is under crops ; the forest plants can satisfy their wants 

 less fully in the soil, the poorer the latter, and the more exacting 

 the species of tree grown, and the less provision has been made 

 for its roots to penetrate deeply in the soil. But when coppice 

 is grown associated with field-crops (IldcLirdId), the greater 

 or less reduction in fertility of the soil occurs every 15 — 20 

 years only ; or when high forest is so grown [IHklenculd and 

 WuhlffhlUnu), only every 80 — 100 years : if then, the soil-cover- 

 ing is carefully protected on areas so treated, no litter removed 

 and the soil by nature sufficiently rich and moist, the results of 



