LIMITS TO USE OF. 623 



Maintenance of a dense leaf-canopy should be the chief 

 maxim ; it cannot indeed be expected that the standing-crop 

 will be as dense where litter is removed as in an unimpaired forest, 

 but this failing need not be increased by defective sylvicultural 

 treatment. Thinnings and extraction of dead trees should be 

 discontinued in such cases, unless a proper control is exercised 

 over woodcutters, who are inclined to imagine that they can find 

 dead trees all over a forest. Great care should be exercised in 

 thinnings where litter is removed, for the peasantry prefer these 

 fellings to any others, as they yield wood without any reduction 

 of the area from which litter may be obtained. The forester 

 should, however, most carefully attend to his mature Avoods, to 

 compartments opened out by fellings, and secure their regenera- 

 tion as soon as possible. Some of the following protective 

 measures should be adopted, according to the circumstances of 

 the case : — Soil-protection woods ; protective-belts of spruce in 

 places exposed to the action of winds ; abolition of the removal 

 of dead wood ; maintenance of water-reservoirs in mountain 

 regions, and utilization of the water to irrigate the hill-sides ; 

 in any case, great caution should be shown before draining 

 plateaux in mountain-regions, and, as a rule, such drainage 

 should not be undertaken ; horizontal trenches should be dug on 

 steep slopes for the retention of dead leaves and water, as in the 

 Bavarian Palatinate ; slopes, whence litter has been removed, 

 should be roughly hoed with the same object. 



Although the forester can do something sylviculturally to 

 protect the soil of the forest, more may be done by the method 

 under which the litter is removed. This must obviously be 

 rendered as innocuous as possible ; thus the demand for litter 

 should, if possible, be met by supplying those kinds which the 

 forest can best dispense with ; places and woods are opened 

 which can best Avithstand the loss ; the intensity and length of 

 rotation of the removal of litter should be modified in places 

 which are most liable to injury, and a season chosen for the 

 usage when the soil is least exposed to be dried up. 



2. Kind of Littn: 



Litter from roads, halting-places, ditches and blanks, and 

 from forest weeds, may be supplied with least injury to the 



