338 NATURAL REGENERATION BY SEED. 



it and the safety of the ground is not ther eby threatened, to grub 

 out the trees instead of merely felling them by the base. The 

 price of the extra wood thus obtained may not only compensate 

 for the additional expenditure incurred, but also even cover a 

 great part, if not the whole, of the working expenses of the pre_ 

 paratory operations generally. But the success of the operation is 

 not to be measured only by the money returns it directly yields, 

 but also, thanks to the way in which it loosens and breaks up the 

 soil, by the great help it gives to natural regeneration, saving, it 

 may be, a final large recourse to expensive artificial methods. In- 

 stead of first felling a tree in the ordinary way and thengiubbing 

 out the stump and principal roots, it is best to at once expose and 

 undermine the main roots and bring the entire tree down by cut- 

 ting these through. 



Where carts may be admitted without injury to the standing 

 crop, the trees may be converted where they fall and removed only 

 after conversion ; otherwise, after being lopped and rough-dressed, 

 they should be carried out without delay to the nearest road side. 



Pari passu with the felling and conversion operations, all low 

 brushwood should be removed with the help of grubbing or hoe- 

 axes (Figs. 14-17). If the ground is covered with a thick layer of 

 undecomposed or half-decomposed dead leaves, cattle, should be 

 driven over the area backwards and forwards (see p. 49 para 3), 

 or the debris should be crushed and mixed up with the soil with 

 the aid of drags (Fig. 41), hoe axes (Fig. 16 and 17), pickforks 

 (Fig. 40) or with hoes similar to those represented in Figs. 86 and 

 87. Bad swamps should, if practicable at a reasonable outlay, be 

 drained. 



ARTICLE 2. 



THE SEED-FELLING. 



I. Object of the felling. 



If the preparatory operations have been judiciously carried out r 

 there will always be a more or less considerable reproduction on 

 the ground when the time for the seed-felling arrives, and that 

 felling will then really be nothing more than a supplementary 

 operation to complete the sowing so happily begun during the 

 preparatory stage. But in accordance with the original assump- 

 tion of ideal uniformity underlying our description of the present 

 method of natural regeneration, we will assume that the prepara- 

 tory stage has simply resulted in the formation of a crop composed 



