CONVERSION OF COPPICE WOODS INTO HIGH FORESTS. 63 



When interplanting coppice woods, it is essential that the 

 plants should be given the best possible chance of holding 

 their own against the stool shoots, hence vigorous plants with 

 a well-developed natural root system should be chosen, and 

 they should be placed into pits. None of that barbarous 

 system called notching, under which the roots are all pushed 

 to one side. 



A few words about silver fir and spruce. In many cases 

 these species may be planted into coppice .woods. They stand 

 much shade, especially the silver fir, and when they have 

 once commenced to go ahead, they will speedily overtop the 

 coppice shoots. The author has, since 1894, planted spruce 

 into coppice, on an area of 1,700 acres, so far with complete 

 success. He has found the cost of going over the areas, to 

 help the spruce against the coppice shoots, very small, and in 

 plantations, seven years old, the spruce does not require any 

 further help. The value of spruce timber in Britain is at 

 present small, but if the trees are grown in fully stocked 

 woods, they will produce timber of a higher quality, because 

 the annual rings will be narrower, and the stems free of 

 branches to a good height. As to quantity, spruce is a good 

 producer ; on soil of fair quality 100 cubic feet, according to 

 quarter-girth measurement, per acre and year may safely be 

 relied on. The author has a spruce wood forty years old, 

 situated on a rather steep south-eastern slope, the under- 

 lying rock being clay- slate, at an elevation of 1,100 feet above 

 the sea, which has produced 127 cubic feet, quarter-girth 

 measurement, per acre and year. Such woods will pay a fail- 

 rate of interest on the capital invested in them, apart from 

 any rise in the price of timber in the future. 



7. The Production of High-Class Oak, Ash, and Larch 



Timber. 



Firewood being of small value in Britain, timber trees should 

 be reared in such a manner that they yield the highest pos- 

 sible percentage of high-class timber, and a correspondingly 



