OAK COPPICE-WOOD, 187 



any considerable age, there will not be enough for 

 a permanent crop upon the ground. If, for instance, 

 they were eighty years old, there will not be more 

 than one hundred and twenty trees to the acre, 

 making them about twenty feet one from another. 

 Now, to have a piece of forest ground with that 

 number of stocks upon it to the acre, would never 

 pay the proprietor the common rent of his land : 

 therefore, in order to take advantage of the ground 

 forming the vacant spaces between the stocks, and 

 to make the whole pay ultimately as any other 

 plantation would do, the ground should be properly 

 drained wherever found necessary, and a crop of 

 young oak-trees planted all over it wherever there 

 is room. In this case, the young oaks which 

 may be put in, together with the old stocks, may 

 be made to stand, as nearly as possible, eight 

 feet apart : and again, all the intermediate spaces 

 between them should be filled up with larches, 

 so as to make the trees over the whole plantation 

 stand about four feet one from another ; that is, 

 taking the old stocks into account also. 



By filling up the ground in this manner, the old 

 stocks will ultimately become of more value than if 

 they had been left in an exposed state ; and again, 

 from their growing more rapidly than the young 

 trees, they will produce shelter to the latter in 

 their yoimg state ; so that, putting the whole 

 together, a plantation of this kind grows more 



