362 NATURAL REGENERATION BY SEED. 



(ii) Protection to adjoining groups. If these have, owing to 

 work or accidents, become open, their safety demands very light 

 fellings in bordering forest, particularly on the side of dangerous 

 winds and a powerful sun. This will be no disadvantage for the 

 group in which the seed-felling is to be made, since the balance 

 of the light required will come in laterally. 



Another important point to note in connection with the group 

 method is that the seed-felling may be undertaken even in the 

 total absence of fertile trees within the area of the coupe, provided 

 such trees stand immediately outside, especially to windward. 

 Hence, regeneration may often be commenced at an earlier age 

 than it could, under similar circumstances, be undertaken in the 

 uniform method. 



ARTICLE 3. 



THE AFTER-FELLINGS. 



These are the only fellings of the regeneration series that can 

 never be dispensed with. More so than even in the seed-felling, 

 the character of the surrounding groups must be allowed to exer- 

 cise its full influence on the progress and establishment of the 

 seedlings and on the extent of the fellings. Thus in a small group 

 surrounded on every side by dense forest not yet under regene- 

 ration, the after-fellings must be made with a freer hand than 

 would, under similar circumstances, be permissible in the uniform 

 method, and the last after-felling must be made comparatively 

 early, since the surrounding forest will make up for any deficiency 

 of overhead shelter caused thereby. The object of these severer 

 and earlier fellings is to let in light sideways into the bordering 

 forest and thus serve for it as preparatory and seed-felling com- 

 bined, so that beginning with a small completely regenerated 

 group as a centre, the regenerated area may go on extending itself 

 in every direction. On the other hand, in a large group, enclosed 

 by others the regeneration of which has already been completed, 

 the after-fellings, must, as compared with an equivalent case in the 

 uniform method, be lighter, more frequently repeated and spread 

 over a longer period, especially along its edge, which, indeed will 

 from the very outset enjoy lateral illumination. The procedure 

 will be slowest and most cautious of all if the surrounding groups 

 contain only an open crop with little or no reproduction on the 

 ground. 



What has just been said may be shortly resumed thus : In 

 making the after-fellings in the group method, while you must 



