316 NATURAL REGENERATION BY SEED. 



the soil must be prepared in a more complete manner. All weeds and 

 brushwood that can be pulled up by the roots should be so extract- 

 ed ; otherwise they should be grubbed out by the crown of the 

 roots with grubbing or hoe-axes (Fig. 14, 15, 16 and 17). The 

 methods of preparing the soil described on pp. 248-9 under (I) and 

 (II) are both applicable here. If circumstances require or permit 

 of it, the soil may even be worked up with powerful ploughs. 

 When the noxious undergrowth or dead vegetable covering is 



o <-> o 



extremely thick and abundant it will suffice, in order to reduce 

 expenditure within resonable limits, to prepare the soil in regular 

 lines of square patches or plots of 4-12 feet side and numbering 

 from 80 to 200 to the acre. 



VII. Repetition of the seed-felling 1 . 



It may happen that the expectation of an abundant crop of good 

 seed has not been realised, or that the seeds have been destroyed, 

 or that, although the seeds have germinated, the seedlings have 

 died off wholesale ; under such circumstances a second felling must 

 be made at the next general fructification. Or it may happen that 

 the original felling was designedly made with caution in order to 

 be prepared for possible accidents during fructification, but that in 

 the sequel the seeding has proved successful ; here a supplementary 

 operation is obviously required to complete the first imperfectly- 

 made one. In either case, the principles to be followed are the 

 same as those laid down in the preceding sub-articles. Such a 

 supplementary operation may also be required in a mixed crop in 

 the interest of some species that has failed to benefit by the origi- 

 nal one. 



ARTICLE 3. 



THE AFTER-FELLINGS. 



I. Object of the after-fellings. 



The object of these fellings is to give to the new seedling crop, 

 pari passu with its growing requirements, further room for expan- 

 sion in the soil, and an increasing share of light, primarily, and of 

 warmth, dew and direct rain, secondarily, without however opening 

 out the leaf-canopy to such an extent as to expose the seedlings to 

 injury by drought, frost, excessive insolation, hail, movements of 

 snow, storms, heavy rain, or hot or cold winds, or to destruction by 

 insects or to invasion by a dense growth of masterful weeds, brush- 

 wood, and coppice shoots. 



