114 ALLOCATION OF FELLINGS. 



the Selection System follow from its unavoidable neglect of this 

 Rule. The origin of the confusion prevailing in our plain forests 

 and of the bad condition in which they are found, is to be tracad 

 to the same cause. In those forests, in former times, the old crops 

 went on decaying in certain secluded corners, lost in the midst of 

 the most varied crops. Even at the present day, ill-stocked areas, 

 incapable of any improvement whatsoever, and scattered here and 

 there in the midst of other compartments, are sometimes allowed to 

 stand OD, while, owing to the absence of exploitable timber, young 

 and valuable crops are destroyed. In copses the necessity of the 

 First Rule for locating cuttings is so obvious that it is enforced 

 without question before every other Rule, the only exception being 

 when its observance would lead to the felling of timber still far 

 removed from its exploitability. 



If, as if often the case, the distribution of the various 

 age-groups does not permit of the observance of the First Rule 

 from one end of the forest to the other, we can still do without such 

 extreme regularity. We need be able to exploit successively in 

 this manner only a whole natural block or a large group of crops, 

 in order to secure all the advantages resulting from an observance 

 of the First Rule. If after this, the felling operations have to go 

 with a bound to some more or less distant point, we sacrifice none 

 of these advantages, provided there again we meet with a similar 

 block or group of compartments admitting of uniformly successive 

 exploitation. Indeed it is rarely that we have to pass from one 

 block to an adjoining one without a break in the succession of the 

 cuttings, and, as a rule, it is much more impoi-tant in arranging the 

 succession of the cuttings from one block to another, to be guided 

 by the condition of the crops than by their age. It is thus, by 

 taking collective groups of crops or compartments, or, as a rule, 

 cantons, separately one by one, that the First Rule for locating 

 coupes should be applied ; In other words, the regularity in the 

 succession of the annual coupes on the ground need not be absolute, 

 but may vary within certain limits according to the forests con- 

 cerned. On the other hand, when in any block the ages of the 

 various crops are so different, that the First Rule for locadng 

 coupes cannot be observed except by neglecting all considerations 

 of Exploitability, that Rule must yield the place to such consider- 

 ations. The only exception is when the very existence and 



