372 NATURAL REGENERATION BY SEED. 



badly injured owing to the nature of the ground. But in such 

 localities would any other method of regeneration do less damage ? 

 Obviously not. In the second place, to deal with charge (2), why 

 should forests under jardinage produce worse timber than any 

 other class of forests situated under the same conditions of soil, 

 climate, species and quality of vegetation ? When such conditions 

 are as favourable in jardinage forests as in those to which the 

 method previously described are always applied, the select trees 

 never have anything more than their whole crown, if so much, 

 free, the boles being closely surrounded from first to last by the 

 younger growth which fills up the intervals between these trees, 

 certainly more closely than can occur in a crop in which the trees, 

 being of one age, are more or less of the same height and vigour. 

 Now why should boles formed under such conditions be more knotty 

 and crooked than under the conditions obtaining in a one-age 

 crop ? The charge is really too absurd to deserve even being noticed. 

 Here again the particular circumstances found in those steep and 

 inhospitable regions to which jardinage has been banished are 

 generalised for jardinage everywhere. If in those same regions 

 any other of the vaunted superior methods were applied, what 

 would be the result? Not even the production and maintenance of 

 a forest composed of a large portion of crooked and knotty trees, 

 but the complete disappearance of all forest growth. In the third 

 and last place, "the necessary absence of thinnings" and "un- 

 regulated regeneration" are pure assumptions. In the cold, bleak, 

 sparsely populated and inaccessible regions where alone European 

 foresters will give jardinage a chance, small timber has obviously 

 little or no value, and thinnings would be an expensive surplus- 

 age ; but adopt the method in a forest commanding a ready market 

 for all it can produce, and thinnings would be just as essential an 

 adjunct of jardinage as of any other system of regeneration, only 

 they must be made on a different principle (see Chapter on Ordina- 

 ry Thinnings in Book III) . 



SECTION I. 

 The method of clearings . 



DESCRIPTION OF THE METHOD. In this method a wide area is 

 completely cleared, regenaration being expected to follow imme- 

 diately from seeds entering from outside. The seeds may be 

 brought in by one or more of the following agencies. 



(i) Wind. The extent to which the wind can in any case be 

 relied on will depend on its velocity and direction at the time the 



