BOOK VI. 



CONVERSION OF COPPICE mTO HIGH FOREST. 

 Genbral Considekations. 



Forests constituted aa high forest yield ou the whole more 

 useful and more abundant produce than if they were worked as 

 copse. The inference to draw from this is that it is the duty of 

 the State to convert into high forest all the copses it possesses. The 

 object of the conversion is to replace the copse, composed of shoots 

 from the stool, by high forest crops grown entirely from seed. In- 

 deed, to whatever age we may allow a copse to grow on, it will al- 

 ways remain a collection of stoolshoots. It cannot develop in the 

 same manner as a mass of high forest trees ; besides this, its growth 

 is precocious and begins to languish at an early age ; and, lastly, it 

 decays prematurely without yielding, as do crops of high forest, 

 timber of large size. Hence, whether we regard its origin or its 

 aftergrowth, or consider it from an economical or cultural point of 

 view, a copse presents no points of resemblance in any essential de- 

 tail to a high forest. It hence follows that the conversion of a 

 copse into a high forest cannot be effected by means of Transfor- 

 mation Fellings, or by merely modifying the actual standing crop. 

 Simply making a few Thinnings or removing some of the trees or 

 carrying out any other like operations would have no other result 

 than that of changing the condition of the copse, while still pre- 

 serving its essential character of being a copse. The conversion of 

 a copse means then nothing less than the regeneration of the entire 

 forest by seed, the end in view being to replace the old stock on 

 stools by high forest crops of all ages from the young seedling to 

 masses of exploitable timber. 



