36 REGIME 



ligneous tissue acquires considerable importance when we come to 

 deal with timber. Now, quantity for quantity, the proportion of 

 sound and well-shaped timber is much larger in high forests than in 

 copses with standards. The standards, rising'above the underwood, 

 often have their boles irregularly twisted or affected with hollows in 

 the interior, and with holes and knots in which decomposition has 

 made more or less progress. The crowns, struck continually by the 

 wind and weakened by the periodical development of epicorms ^ 

 below, lose some of their branches, which, in breaking off, allow 

 water to permeate into the trunk, thereby producing decom- 

 position. The butt-end of the trees will also be found to be full of 

 defects arising from various causes. The result is that in our copses 

 with standards it is often necessary to examine a number of trees 

 before we can discover a single oak with a girth of 7\ feet at the 

 base, that is sound and of regular form and which possesses a bole 

 at least 20 feet long. 



Thus owing to the I'arity of large trees and their defective and 

 unsound condition, it is exceptional in our forests to meet with oaks 

 fit for employment in large works. 



The purposes for which wood of all kinds, and oak especially, is 

 used by the builder and the artificer are as various as the different 

 qualities of the timber itself. Oaks that grow isolated, with an 

 ample crown bathed on every side in light, form thick annual rinffs 

 of wood ; their timber is thus close-grained, tough and durable, and 

 peculiarly suitable for house-beams and for ship-building. Oaks 

 that grow in canopied forest, possess thereby a long bole and thin 

 annual rings ; the wood is soft, is easy to work, contracts little and 

 does not warp ; it is thus specially adapted for planking and staves 

 of casks. It follows then that under the same conditions of soil and 

 climate, coppice standards and high forest trees will yield timber of 

 essentially different qualities. That of the former, extremely valua- 

 ble as it is for the purposes of the builder, must be looked upon 

 more as pieces de choix, which being employed for special purposes, 

 are not therefore required in any large quantity, while that of the 

 latter, being much sought after by the artificer, is to be preferred 



(]) Prom epi, upon, and kormos, a.stem. 



Bpicormic brnanhes develop themselves on the boles of trees, gerierally 

 those which have been isolated after luviiif; grown for sume time in close leaf- 

 canopy. To avoid inconvenient repetition of tlie word " branch" we will employ 

 the single term " epicorm." (Translator.) 



