190 CAUSE OF DISEASE AMONG 



do think that proprietors should not, at the present 

 time, rear up oak plantations with the intention of 

 converting them into coppice, as has in many in- 

 stances been done of late. I have seen plantations 

 of healthy oak trees, about thirty-five years of 

 age, cut down for the sake of the bark they pro- 

 duced, and with the view of converting them 

 into coppice-wood, so as to have a crop of bark 

 every twenty-five years afterwards. Now, had 

 those trees which were cut down at thirty-five 

 years of age, been allowed to grow for other forty 

 or fifty years, they would, of course, have attained 

 their full magnitude, and been worth to the pro- 

 prietor, at the end of that period, more than three 

 times the money that he could get as the produce 

 of the same plants if cut down and disposed of in 

 the form of coppice-wood, at periods of twenty-five 

 or thirty years. 



The safest and the best plan, with regard to all 

 plantations, is, to allow the trees to attain their full 

 magnitude in the usual way, when the timber will 

 in all cases find a ready market, and at a fair price. 

 No doubt, where old plantations are cut down, it is 

 right and proper that the stocks of them should 

 be converted into coppice-wood ; for tliis is taking 

 advantage of growths Avhich can be converted into 

 use, and which would otherwise be lost; but to 

 raise up trees to a certain age, and then cut them 

 down prematurely for the sake of their bark, is, at 



