27S COMPOUND COPSES UNDER CONVERSION. 



However it be, every Working Circle of the new organisation 

 ought, as a rule, to comprise more than one of the original Coppice 

 Working Circles, or parts of several such Circles. The main point 

 to insist on is that it should contain at the very beginning of the 

 new Rotation a sufSciently large area fit to be regenerated at once 

 by seed, and hence capable of constituting the First Periodic Block. 



Nor is the condition of the other parts of the new Working 

 Circles without some importance. It is just as desirable to have 

 the second Block of each one of them rich in standards and well 

 •constituted as regards its underwood, so as to yield a sufficient 

 quantity of produce and at the same time offer the means of success- 

 ful natural regeneration during the Second Period. And more than 

 this, it is a good thing to have, outside the First Block, coppice 

 crops old enough to bear productive fellings at the very commence- 

 ment of the conversion, and of sufficiently well-graduated ages to 

 provide against any interruption in the serial succession of the 

 exploitations to be made. 



It is easy to conceive how a period of waiting well spent in 

 the necessary preparation for conversion enables us in most cases 

 to secure all these results in a timely and complete manner. 



Such, barring some exceptions, are the essential conditions 

 that must be realised in order to form the new Working Circles, 

 by grouping together into them the existing coppice crops, which 

 in other respects may, for the matter of that, present all and every 

 degree of variety. 



§ 3. Rotation. 



By the term Rotation of Conversion we understand the time 

 required to create a well-graduated succession of seed-grown crops 

 conveniently distributed between the principal broadly-defined high 

 forest age-classes, from the young carpet of seedlings to the exploit- 

 able mass of fuli-grown trees. When the conversion of the forest 

 that is, its replacement by a new generation of seed-grown trees, 

 can be taken in hand at once, the Rotation of Conversion ought to 

 be the same as the Rotation that would be adopted, bad the forest 

 been already constituted as a high forest. We will term this th« 

 NoBMAL Rotation. 



