17'1 MAINTENANCE OF THE SELECTION METHOD, 



becoming so ia course of time. The fellings here referred to 

 demand much skill and experience, and will be found described and 

 treated of in any work on Sylviculture. We would advise the 

 student to read up that part of Sylviculture once more, if he wishes 

 to study with profit the organisation of a selection-worked forest 

 under transformation. 



While the transformation operations are going on in one portion 

 of the Working Circle, the mature trees found over the rest of it 

 must also be felled. Hence it is necessary to continue for a time 

 true Selection Fellings. These must be so regulated as to avoid 

 the risks inherent in the Selection System itself, and to minimize 

 its shortcomings by gradually improving and increasing the growing 

 stock. Our finest silver fir forests, those of Levier in the Jura, and 

 of the Sault plain in the Aude, have been so worked, with mode- 

 ration and judgment, for very nearly half a century in those 

 compartments which have not yet reached their turn for transfor- 

 mation. These now*contain, splendid crops, abounding in vigorous, 

 promising growth, and yielding every year excellent produce. 



SECTION II. 



MAINTENANCJi; OF THE SELECTION METHOD. 



The Selection System, if worked with judgment, preserves a 

 forest in a canopied state, irregular it is true,but presenting every- 

 where trees of large dimensions. These, thanks to their size, consti- 

 tute the principal portion of the stock and the most important class 

 of the standing timber. Thanks to them, certain forests worked by 

 Selection present the true aspect of a regular high forest : the 

 poles, by reason of their small diameter and their contracted 

 crowns, do not strike the eye, while the young growth, overtopped, 

 of no height, and incomplete as it is, makes little show. It is chiefly 

 in spruce forests that this well-marked type is to be met with ; but 

 the Selection System admits of the maintenance of a tall canopied 

 crop of any species whatsoever. 



Moreover, under this system, reproduction is constantly going 

 on throughout the forest. The extraction of single trees here and 

 there from the midst of the canopied mass lets in sufficient light 

 where they stood,' and a sort of twilight under the crowns of their 



