OUR COPSES AS THET ARE. 215 



called, without forgetting that it yields valuable produce. It must 

 be looked upon chiefly as an indispensable auxiliary means for pre- 

 serving and protecting the eoil and as a nursery for future stand- 

 ards, those, viz., which are to take the place of the trees felled in 

 the exploitations. 



In forests under State management the selection and number 

 of the trees to reserve in each coppice coupe is regulated by the 

 Edict promulgated in 1827 with the Forest Code. But the wise, 

 provisions of that Edict are very far from being followed everywhere 

 to the full extent required ; for it must be confessed that if, on the 

 one hand, care has been generally taken to reserve the number of 

 First Class standards prescribed by it, on the other hand, but little 

 attention has in the majority of cases been paid to the much more 

 important injunction, according to which no trees should be felled 

 except such as ARE decaying or cannot gain by being presehved 



FOR ANOTHER ROTATION OF THE UNDERWOOD. Let US also add 



the sad fact that only too often have fine oak standards of the 

 second and higher classes been sacrificed with the avowed object of 

 reducing the area covered by the crowns of the reserve and of favor- 

 ing the growth of the underwood. It is to this circum- 

 stance chiefly that we must attribute the diversity to be now- 

 adays observed in the constitution and composition of our 

 copses with standards. This diversity may often be observed 

 simply by going from one «oupe to an adjacent one of 

 the selfsame forest, and reflects as clearly as in a mirror the 

 proclivities and mental attitude of the Forest Officers who have 

 selected the standards therein. However it be, the density, growth 

 and production of the underwood depend necessarily on the con- 

 stitution of the reserve ; the more numerous the latter is, especially 

 as regards large trees with dense, low crowns, the more open, sickly 

 and small will be the underwood. It has also been noticed that 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of large trees the coppice stools 

 lose earlier the property of throwing up shoots. But in revenge 

 it is in these very places that we find the greatest number of 

 seedlings of oak and other species, of which the former will furnish 

 the very finest individuals possible to recruit the reserve, and the 

 latter young and, therefore, vigorous stools to fill up the blanks 

 caused by the fall of the large trees and to replenish the underwood. 



