HIGH FOEEST AND COPPICE COMPAEED. 175 



in its favour. If we only consider the enhanced 

 value of a veteran oak, we see that the conservation 

 of three or four more standards of the class imme- 

 diately below may often double the value of an acre 

 of coppice. Moreover, even as concerns rate of invest- 

 ment (ratio of net revenue to capital), it is sufficiently 

 high, seeing that the price of large-sized timber is 

 constantly rising. 



The chief reason why coppice is inferior to high 

 forest is to be found in the shortness of the rotation. 

 A single act of recklessness in the oft recurring 

 exploitations is enough to ruin a forest for several 

 generations. The danger increases with the area 

 cut every year. Certain forests there are, where the 

 mischief caused by such operations carried on during 

 a period of fifteen or twenty years, cannot now be 

 repaired before the lapse of a century and a half. 

 In a regularly worked high forest, on the other hand, 

 when the rotation has been judiciously chosen and 

 the blocks properly laid out, the damage caused by 

 faulty operations is necessarily limited in area. 

 Nothing short of the most careless thinnings can 

 destroy the future of a crop, and regeneration cut- 

 tings must be very badly executed indeed for natural 

 forces to be powerless to restock the ground with the 

 valuable indigenous species, a certain amount of 

 delay not exceeding a single period helping towards 

 this end. But it is to be hoped that the progress of 

 knowledge will continually decrease the frequency of 

 operations executed at hazard or under a fixed idea. 

 This leads us to recognise the necessity of first 

 improving, without changing, the system actually 



