FORERTS WORKED A TIEE ET AIRE. 199 



By the time a forest reached this advanced age, the cover of 

 the trees must everywhere have become lofty, all low undergrowth 

 must long since have disappeared, and the soil must have been 

 already covered with a more or less abundant crop of seedlings. The 

 trees^that had to be spared at the exploitations, were reserved sim- 

 ply with a view to the production of timber of , exceptional size and 

 quality. Indeed, at the age fixed for the clean-fellings, the oak trees, 

 if there were any, could neither have possessed great diameter, nor 

 have contained very close-grained wood, owing to the overcrowded 

 state In which they necessarily grew up. And it was precisely in 

 forests of oak and hornbeam, or of oak and beech, that this method 

 of treatment was in full force. 



The limited area under State control that now remains to us of 

 our old high forests of the broad-leaved species (about 500,000 acres) 

 was formerly subjected to the tire et aire method. These forests, 

 such as they were 50 years ago, are faithfully described in the 

 '' Cours de Culture des Bois " of Messrs. Lorentz and Parade, and 

 although their aspect and condition have been singularly modified 

 by the exploitations that have been made in them since those days, 

 yet we must still go back to the description of those forests as given 

 by our Masters, in order to draw therefrom the necessary inspiration 

 to enable us rightly to understand how to organise and treat them 

 so as to regularise them. 



Nearly all these forests are situated in the plains, or in undula- 

 ting country where the climate is mild. Of_|the principal species, all 

 well adapted to the soil and climate, they contain the oaks, beech 

 and hornbeam, besides, in an exceptional manner, the Scots' pine, 

 which is artificially introduced in order to repair damage caused 

 either by accidents or faulty operations. The oak is too often found 

 in them in a pure state, the result of a systematic attempt to exter- 

 minate the beech and hornbeam. The sessile flowered oak adapts 

 itself better to this state than the peduncled species, the result being 

 that we have now completely canopied masses of pure sessile-flower- 

 ed oak aged from 150 to 200 years, perfectly healthy, but making 

 exceedingly slow growth and thus yielding spongy and nerveless 

 timber. We could cite several cases in which the trunks measure 

 scarcely -0 inches in diameter, whereas if they had grown in associa- 

 tion with the beech in dry soils and with the hornbeam in moist 

 localities, they would have attained twice that thickness. The 



