COXTERglOX OF COPPICE INTO HIGH FOKEST 269 



essential materials at hand.^ What we have just said admits of 

 onl}- a single exception, viz., the case of a forest growing in very 

 poor soil or in soil that has undergone hopeless deterioration, that 

 is to say, soil on which stool crops make wretched growth and caa 

 be easily and profitably replaced by a conifer crop. This case 

 excepted, the conversion of copses into high forests by means of 

 natural reproduction is the sole method that ought to be adopted, 

 not only because regeneration by natural means is obtained with 

 greater certainty and at less cost than by artificial methods, but also 

 because self-sown crops are always finer and more vigorous than 

 those raised artificially. 



We ought also to add that in most copses the ground can be 

 sown naturally to a suflScient extent only by the standards and by 

 the older stool -poles, the cover of which ia high enough up above 

 the ground. When an old copse, being exploitable as such, is pre- 



1 The preseoce of stool-shoots in the midst of the seedlings is the woi^st 

 danger to he encountered in couveraion operations. TVhereas seedlings do not 

 begin to shoot up rapidly until after their first youth, after the age of 30 years 

 for instance, stool-shoots push up apace at once and it takes them only a few 

 years to suppress any seedlings coming up with them. Once stool-shoots are 

 exposed to abundant light, they can be kept down only by repeated Cleauhjgs 

 which must be begun at once, otherwise the task soon multiplies and gets 

 beyond control, and a few years of delay may result iu the stool-shoots gaining 

 complete possession of the ground. In any case a mLstuie of seedlinga and 

 stool-shoots forms two discordant elements of growth- The latter overtop 

 the former a-ud oppose their development to such an extent that if the crop 

 when it arrives at the low pole stage ^which it generally reaches towards the 

 age of 40 years"), is not composed exclusively of seedling trees, it is only too 

 probable that it will be a wretched one and without any prospect of improve- 

 ment. 



If the presence of stool-shoots in the midst of selfsown seedlings is so full 

 of danger to them and calls for so much careful precaution, what must be the 

 case when the seedUngs have been raised artificially 1 For in ibis case the 

 young plants, necessarily few and f,ir between and thrown back in their dere- 

 lopmeut, are fatally doomed to disappear from the midst of the stool-shoots iu 

 the course of a few years. The creation of a forest on a perfectly bare soil is 

 cert;iinly a less expensive aud more certain operation than the conversion of 

 a copse into a high forest by artificial sowing or planting. Tlmt method is 

 hence applicable only in the blauk portions of ruined copses. As for those 

 portions which ai'e badly stocked, which contain only the softwoods or iu 

 which the principal species is conspicuous by its absence (e. ff., a copse of horn- 

 beam), it is a safer plan to modify their condition graduallj-, say by exploiting 

 them twice over as compound copse, than to attempt their dii'ect conrersion. 



