98 NATURAL REGENERATION 



ards the poorer the coppice, except on the richest of soils. But from 

 the American viewpoint the question must always arise: "If standards 

 pay well, why not have high forest and be done with it?" In the ma- 

 jority of cases the owner of the coppice-under-standards probably pre- 

 fers this system, since he has not so much capital tied up as he would 

 have in the high forest, and because he not only gets his returns oftener 

 but gets besides some saw timber. 



A Substitute for Coppice-Under-Standards (Futaie Claire). — Accord- 

 ing to Huffel (pp. 327-333, Vol. II), a new method of treatment must 

 be adopted for the oak-beech stands in the northeast of France: 



"In a large part of France, and precisely that part where there are most public for- 

 ests, the natural regeneration of broadleaf trees, where oak is the chief species, is at- 

 tended by great difficulties. The seed crops are often very rare, separated by intervals 

 of almost 2.5 years. (There were no complete crops in Lorraine from 1861 to 1888.) 

 Furthermore, in this region, the oak grows on fresh (compact) clay . . . where 

 weeds grow rapidly and prevent natural regeneration. These difficulties, and others 

 . . . decided our predecessors to abandon the treatment of forests under regular high 

 forest (futaie pleine) in the northeast of France. . . . They had pictured instead 



. . a coppice-under-standards. . . . But when fuel wood commenced to be 

 menaced by coal . . . they looked for a substitute for the coppice-under-standards 

 which would produce a minimum of fuel and a maximum of saw timber. Two solutions 

 were adopted. In the State forests they generally undertook the conversion of the 

 coppice-under-standards to regular high forest. ... It ended, in many forests, by 

 their abandoning the conversions. . . . The attempts at conversion put a great 

 many of our best stands in a state of disorder. . . . Then they thought best 

 to substitute for the coppice-under-standards what they called 'high forest over 

 coppice,' that is to say, by multiplying as many times as possible the number of 

 standards in the compound coppice. . . . The coppice-under-standards became 

 gradually, under the influence of exaggerated reserves, a sort of irregular high forest 

 over a decrepit coppice, formed mostly of weed trees in which the oak had entirely dis- 

 appeared. . . . Where the young standards were oak . . . the harm was not 

 irreparable. A systematic felling of three-fourths the 2R standards . . . would 

 reform the coppice. . . . But where these IR standards or superabundant 2R 

 standards were beech the situation was very grave. . . . They will be forced after 

 one or two rotations to complete the conversion to high forest. . . . The high forest 

 over coppice, where you mark 200-300 standards from the coppice (aged 25 to 30 years) 

 is nonsense and ends sooner or later in an 'impasse' from which it is difficult to get out. 



"It seems possible to form a type of forest, more easily secured in the northeast of 

 France than the regular high forest, and more productive in saw timber than the cop- 

 pice-under-standards. It is with this aim in view that we now sketch a kind of ex- 

 ploitation which we call by the old term 'open high forest' (futaie claire) that our pre- 

 decessors frequently used for discribing the isolated oaks which they grew above their 

 coppice." 



Huffel accordingly proposes in effect a selection high forest with 

 oak as the principal species with fellings on a 15-year cutting cycle 

 regulated by area. With a 120-year rotation there would be trees in 

 the first compartment 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 105, and 120 years old; 



