68 ELEMENTARY FORESTRY. 



until the seedlings get well started, and to prevent this it may 

 be necessary to cut back the crowding plants every summer. 



It is quite common in European forests to see patches of 

 land, perhaps four feet square, at twenty-foot intervals, which 

 have been stripped of their mossy cover and sown to seed. 

 These afford a sort of nursery throughout the forest, from which 

 seedlings may be transplanted and on which a number of seed- 

 ling plants are left and form a good forest cover. 



Mound Planting is a term which signifies the planting of 

 trees on mounds or on the surface of the land. This is some- 

 times done on wet lands for the purpose of getting the roots 

 above standing water, and it is a practice which can be followed 

 in the case of several trees that do well upon rather moist soil, 

 although they may die if put at once into standing water when 

 young. 



Regeneration by Cuttings. There are few trees that can 

 be grown in general practice from cuttings, but it is the best way 

 to start willows, since seedlings of them are generally quite diffi- 

 cult to obtain. Some species of the poplar can also be grown to 

 best advantage in this way. 



Regeneration by Sprouts and Suckers. Some trees, 

 such as the willow, poplars, oaks, chestnuts and maples renew 

 themselves very readily by sprouts and suckers. Land that is 

 managed on this plan for renewal is termed coppice. With the 

 exception of the willow and possibly one or two other trees, the 

 growth from coppice is not so large as that from seedlings, and 

 it is seldom employed for other purposes than the production 

 of firewood. In order to get the best growth in this way, the 

 trees should be cut close to the ground when they are dormant, 

 and the stumps left highest in the center, so they will tend to 

 shed water and not rot. The advantage of cutting close to the 

 ground is that the sprouts that come out from the trunk soon 

 get roots of their own, which makes them more durable than 

 when they depend entirely upon the old stump roots and they 

 are much less liable to be broken off in high winds. 



Pollarding consists in cutting back the side branches of a 

 tree, or cutting off the main stem at a few feet from the ground. 

 The branches may be cut off close to the main stem or at a short 

 distance from it, the latter method being preferable. New 



