250 COMPLEMENTART WORK IN THE ORGANISATION OP COPSES- 



therefore, always abstain from mutilatiug formed trees by depriving 

 them of their large limbs or any considerable portion of their foliage. 

 It is better to reserve a smaller number of such trees than to go 

 and spoil them. 



The necessity of pruning, properly so called, its effects in the 

 given forest, and the limits within which it may safely be carried 

 out, ought therefore to be separately discussed in the Statistical Re- 

 port attached to the Organisation Project. 



But the proper organisation of a forest must have nothing to 

 say on the subject of this operation, unless it be to adopt a Rotation 

 of sufficient length to effect a natural pruning of all the boles up 

 to the required height. 



If the organisation of a forest ought to occupy itself little or not 

 at all with the removal of large branches, the case becomes quite 

 different when we come to the removal of epicorms. In most copses 

 with standards, the pruning off of the epicormic branches, which 

 make their appearance on the boles of the reserved trees after the 

 underwood has been felled, constitutes an improvement operation of 

 very great importance. It is the necessary complement of a method 

 of treatment, which alternately isolates and shuts up in the midst 

 ot dense leaf-canopy the trees preserved at the general exploitations. 

 In many forests of mediocre growth, the operation in question be- 

 comes a necessity in order to save the oak standards from a prema- 

 ture death. Whenever this is so, the Am^nagiste ought to consider 

 this improvement operation in all its bearings in the General Statis- 

 tical Report, and follow up the Selection Plan for Standards with 

 directions as to Low it should be effected. This is the surest means 

 of having the work done at the right tims. As a rule, the epicorms* 

 which are mere branchlets, ought to be cut off flush with the trunk 

 of the tree, and it is enough if the boles of the trees operated upon 

 are in this manner cleared up to two-thirds of their length ; but it 

 may be found expedient to repeat the operation at the end of the 

 second or third year. 



It is not seldom that artificial restocking has to be resorted to 

 in some of the blanks, which are common in compound as well as 



