INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN IN SCHOOL OF FORESTRY. 155 



little larger and heavier than that of the Scotch fir, but the mem- 

 braneous wing is also larger, which favours its dispersion to a distance. 

 The secondary coupe will be unnecessary, on account of the hardy 

 constitution of the young plant and the extreme rapidity of its growth, 

 which lead us to believe that the coupe definitive should follow the 

 coupe d^ensemencement as soon as possible, that is to say, in the year 

 after the repeiiplejnent, or within two years at the latest. 



" Coupes d'amelioration. — What we have said on this head regarding 

 the Scotch fir, equally applies to the maritime pine. The first 

 thinning should be expedited on account of the rapidity of its growth, 

 and the intervals between those which follow should be abridged. 



" The rules we have laid down for the exploitation are only 

 applicable when the trees are not subjected to gemmage. When trees 

 are to be gemme these rules should be modified. For, on the one 

 hand this operation diminishes the growth and shortens the life of 

 the tree, and on the other it is not timber, but resin which becomes 

 the chief product of the forest. The first circumstance renders much 

 shorter revolutions necessary ; the other, that the thinnings should be 

 made at very short intervals, according to a method practised in the 

 south of France, of which an account has been given. 



" It being evidently the interest of the proprietor to hasten the 

 period of gemmage as much as possible, it is of great consequence to 

 promote the growth of the stem and summit in every way. For this 

 end the young trees are thinned for the first time, at the age of seven, 

 and afterwards the operation is repeated every six years until they are 

 twenty-five years old, at which age they are supposed to have attained 

 a suitable size. In these operations the pines are isolated by degrees. 

 After the two first fellings the mass, although thinned, should still be 

 preserved so as to promote the development of height ; but after the 

 third the number of trunks is reduced to 700 or 800 per hectare j 

 and after the fourth only 500 remain; five years later these are again 

 reduced to 400. The 100 trees doomed to fall in the fifth thinning 

 are gemmes cb mort, between the fourth and that, the others are 

 gemmes d, vie. 



" These 400 pines remain standing from thirty to sixty years, and 

 are gemmes every five years. At the expiry of sixty years, 100 trees 

 are marked to be gemmes cb mort, and are then cut down, while the 300 

 still remaining stand until the final coupe at the end of seventy or 

 eighty years, sometimes of one hundred years, according to the state 

 of the timber and the quality of the soil. 



" We have already described how coupes de regeneration should be 



