102 CULTIVATION OF COPPICES. 



In catting, with the view of reproduction, the stumps should be left 

 low, and the tops sloping and smooth, so as not to admit water. It is 

 sometimes the practice to dress off the stump in a convex form with an 

 adze, talking especial care not to separate the bark from the trunk. It 

 is along this line of union between the wood and the bark, that the young 

 shoots start, and if separated, they will not sprout. 



In precipitous glens and waste places difficult of access, it may often 

 be found more profitable to cultivate wood as coppice rather than to 

 allow it to grow to full dimensions, partly because wood of small size 

 may be got out of such places where timber of large dimensions could 

 not be removed without its costing more than it was worth, and partly 

 because the relatively rapid growth of wood in its earlier years may in the 

 end yield more material than if allowed full growth. Thus, for exam- 

 ple, two crops of twenty years each may be worth more money than one 

 of forty years, and in like manner for older growths, although for cer- 

 tain purposes the latter may be adapted to uses for which the former 

 would not. 



There are also cases in which an impervious or barren subsoil may 

 arrest a growth of timber when it comes to an age where its roots should 

 draw their support from it. Here there appears no alternative to cut- 

 ting at a comparatively early period. Such cases occur also where the 

 soil is underlaid by rock near the surface, and in whicb, from liability 

 to drought from this cause, it may at times be more profitably left for 

 trees than for pasturage or other farming uses. 



In the cutting of coppice woods, it is often the practice to leave a cer- 

 tain number of choice trees of the more valuable kinds to grow to full 

 maturity, and thus acquire a much greater relative value than if cut 

 small. These reserves may be kept through two or three periods or 

 "revolutions." They influence the young growth, by their cover and 

 shade,^ and when properly distributed may be, on the whole, beneficial 

 rather than injurious to the future crop. They should not cover more 

 than a twentieth, or at most a sixteenth, part of the whole surface. As 

 the same stocks will be weakened by repeated cutting, care should be 

 taken to secure new roots from time to time, and one means of doing 

 this is to bend down the tops of some of the sprouts and bury them 

 partly in the soil, by whieh means new roots will in some species form, 

 and, when fairly established, they may be separated from the stock. 

 Such sprouts should be held down by hooked stakes, and the tops kept 

 in position by a piece of sod. 



In the coppice forests of Morvan, which supply about one-third of 

 the fire-wood used in Paris, the cutting begins after the fall of the leaf 

 and as soon as the movement of the sap ceases — that is, from toward 

 the end of October or first days of November — and continues till about 

 the middle of April, when the sap begins to return in spring. If con- 

 tinued later, it would injure reproduction from the stools. The cutting 

 is, however, rigorously forbidden during severe frosts, on account of 

 the damage that might happen at that time from the separation of the 

 bark on the stools from the wood. As the new shoots spring from the 

 line of junction of the wood and bark, this accident would render repro- 

 duction impossible. 



'Lorentz and Parade draw this distinction between cover and shade: The former in- 

 clades the space actually sheltered by the top and branches ; is a constant quantity, 

 except as it enlarges by growth, and is injurious to the growth under it, by weakening 

 the effect of the light and the rain and by preventing dews. Shade is the intercep- 

 tion of sunlight, and may extend far beyond the tree. It may be highly bouehcial to 

 the growth of young wood by keeping the plants cool and damp, without excluding 

 them from the free action of the air. — Culture des Boia, 2d ed., p. 265. 



