SILVICS 13 



species of oak, the red maple and white ash and basswood are 

 prolific sprouters. Next to these in this regard are some species 

 of birch and hickory; but the species characteristic of the 

 northern forest, such as sugar maple, yellow birch, and beech, 

 sprout comparatively Httle, and the trees resulting from them 

 rarely amount to anything. 



A forest produced by sprouts is a coppice or low forest, so 

 called because the trees seldom attain the height of those raised 

 from seed, and are grown mostly for the production of small- 

 dimension materials, especially fuel. 



As distinct from this is the high forest composed of trees that 

 have grown from seed. Practically all our virgin forests were 

 of this character, and wherever a second growth of conifers has 

 come up on an old pasture it is a high forest, even if not over ten 

 feet in height, the distinction being that trees sprung from seed 

 will in time produce tall timber. 



A combination of the coppice and high-forest forms is known 

 as the "composite form," in which seedling trees and sprouts 

 are grown together. 



The effect of these different methods of reproduction are 

 nowhere better exemplified than in the forests of northern and 

 southern New England. The slopes of the White and the Green 

 Mountains when once denuded of their spruce become reclothed 

 with conifers only after a series of years. In the lower and 

 warmer regions of Massachusetts and Connecticut, on the other 

 hand, the hills are immediately reclothed with forest of the same 

 species that were cut. Such are the advantages of the unkept 

 woods of this region over those of the north. But as a practical 

 system the simple coppice can be advised only in regions where 

 there is a profitable market for fuel wood, as small-dimension 

 material is its chief product. In America the sale of such 

 products is slight compared with the demand for lumber, ties, 

 poles, etc., so the land owner should gradually transform the 

 coppice forest to a high forest, either of the same or more valuable 

 species. 



