SIMPLE COPPICE. 113 



But it very rarely happens that the demand for 

 timber is not large enough for coppice with stan- 

 dards not to be here also the preferable method of 

 treatment. The exception will occur only when 

 there is too little soil to produce a bole of sufficient 

 length, twenty feet at least. In this case as well as 

 on warm aspects it is obviously! better, in the 

 interests of the community at large, to grow high 

 forest with trees adapted to the soil and the climate. 

 But conversion is an operation which the State and 

 perhaps a few communes alone can undertake, and 

 simple coppice has thus its complete justification. 



The essential points to study in the treatment of 

 coppice all aim at ensuring the production of shoots 

 and the maintenance of the tree which is being 

 grown. They relate to the manner in which each 

 species coppices or throws up suckers, to the 

 length of the rotations, to the most favourable 

 season for exploitation, and to the manner of felling, 

 cutting up, and removing produce. 



ORIGIN OF THE SHOOTS. The shoots may ori- 

 ginate in two different ways : they may be derived 

 (i) from adventitious buds, or (ii) from dormant buds. 

 Adventitious buds are formed after the tree has 

 been cut down, on a little swelling or excrescence 

 between the bark and the wood. Dormant buds are 

 old buds that have not hitherto sprouted from 

 want of sufficient light, but which, without develop- 

 ing leaves, have continued to live on, traversing 

 at the same time each successive annual ring of 

 growth. Their extremity even passes through the 

 bark as far as the thin outer layer. The point 



