26 DEFINITIONS. 



The silver fir and the spruce are in France the only species to 

 which the Selection Method can at times be applied with advantage. 

 But it is often impossible to adopt any other method in the treat- 

 ment of the various coniferous species of our great mountain tracts. 



Forests subjected to the Coppice Regime are worked as Simple 

 Coppice or as Compound Coppice, Coppice with Standards, 

 Coppice under High Forest, or High Forest over Coppice, the 

 four last denominations denoting one and the same Method op 

 Treatment. 



We thus see that forests subjected to one and the same Regime 

 may be grown or worked according to various Methods of Treat- 

 ment. In our terminology a tree, a forest, timber or waod will be 

 said to be exploitable or to have attained its Exploitability, 

 when it has acquired its maximum usefulness. The age of its exploi- 

 tability may vary between very wide limits, according to the nature 

 of the produce it can furnish at different stages of its growth, and the 

 kind of utility which the owner desires to obtain from it. 



The maximum utility which it is possible to obtain from a tr«e or 

 forest may be regarded from different points of view. For the State 

 and for imperishable proprietors in general, the maximum corres- 

 ponds with the production of those descriptions of wood and timber 

 which are most in demand and are the most capable of satisfying 

 the multifarious wants of society. For a private individual, the 

 maximum utility is attained when the forest is so constituted that it 

 yields him the largest possible income compared with the capital 

 value of the estate. In the first of these cases, It is the production 

 of the most useful articles of consumption that determines the kind 

 of Exploitability; in the second case, it is the money returns or the 

 production of what is most of all coraformable with the private 

 interests of the owner, without regard at all to the quantity or the 

 quality of the produce obtained. ' 



These considerations, and others as well, which will be developed 

 in the succeeding chapters, lead to the distinction of Exploitability 

 into two principal generic classes, viz., (i) the Exploitability 

 depending on the public good, according to which the end in view 

 is to obtain from the forest all it can yield that is useful to the 

 country at large, without considering at all the amount of the 



