HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 273 



and fir can be grown ; and these are, for many 

 soils and situations in Britain, the only crops 

 it would be profitable to cultivate on any large 

 scale. No broad generalisation can, however, be 

 made with regard to any such matter in Forestry, 

 owing to the bulky nature of wood crops and 

 the expense of transport for any distance by land. 

 When oak-bark was well paid, coppices worked 

 in a rotation of fourteen or sixteen years yielded 

 far higher returns than highwoods ; and some 

 of the osier- holts in the fen districts give a 

 more handsome profit than oak- coppice ever 

 did. Again, where there is any fair demand for 

 charcoal for gunpowder, or for cigar-boxes, or 

 the like, alder-coppice may also, under suitable 

 conditions as to soil, prove much more remu- 

 nerative than either copse or highwoods. And 

 in very many parts of Britain copse has peculiar 

 advantages of its own, which make it the system 

 that must find special preference on many estates. 

 The law of entail makes an important difference 

 between timber and coppice, the former being 

 under English law regarded as part of the estate, 

 the money arising from the sale of which is 

 treated as capital on which only the interest is 



