CONDITION OF OUR SELECTION-WORKED FORESTS. 171 



itself ia fairly good condition, whatever its component species, as 

 long as only a moderate quantity is exploited every year. Thus is 

 explained the continuance of that method of working in most of our 

 mountain forests, whether of pine or silver fir, which have hitherto 

 remained inaccessible to the timber-dealer. But although the 

 method of working has been the same everywhere in those forests> 

 their condition is nevertheless very different according to the species 

 composing them. 



In forests of pine, where the trees require bright and abundant 

 light, the Selection System always does more or less harm. Uuder 

 Its operation the leaf-canopy is very far from being uniform, is often 

 open or breached with small gaps, and consists in places of sickly 

 saplings and poles that can never come to anything. Hence that 

 Method of Treatment has in nearly every case been abandoned with 

 the development of an export trade. In forests of silver fir, on the 

 other hand, the young plant of which species bears even heavy cover 

 for a long time, and shoots up rapidly as soon as it is uncovered 

 overhead, crops worked by Selection remain dense and well-stocked 

 with trees of all ages, provided the annual exploitations are 

 moderate. It is this peculiarity of the tree that has rendered possible 

 the maintenance of the Selection Method in our silver fir forests on 

 mountains of medium height, even though they may be situated in 

 the vicinity of roads and drawn upon by the surrounding country. 

 Nevertheless people were not long in recognising the necessity of 

 subjecting the original Selection System to certain rules having for 

 their principal object the limitation of the quantity exploited to a 

 fixed figure. And so the Selection Fellings thus regularised now 

 constitute a recognised Method of Treatment. 



The Method in question consists in the removal here and there 

 of the oldest trees, of those dying, decaying or dead, and of others 

 still in full growth, but which are required to satisfy the wants of the 

 proprietor. It has been applied in this manner, and often with 

 good results, to forests of silver fir and spruce, pure or mixed with 

 beech. The quantity to be exploited, in other words, the annual 

 yield, was usually expressed by the number of trees to be felled. 

 When this number included only real trees and not mere poles, the 

 average was 04, 0'6 or 0'8 trees per acre. For instance in the 

 forests of Lcvicr it was fixed for certain Workinfr Circles at Oi 



