100 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
beech, which can not only bear a greater amount 
of shade, but also preserves the moisture and the 
general quality of the soil by overshadowing it 
better, and by enriching it with the mould formed 
from its heavy fall of foliage. 
Though still possessing in many parts good 
value as coppice, it is rather as a timber tree of 
the copses and of the highwoods that the oak has 
now, and will in the future continue to have, its 
greatest value. Hence it may perhaps be profit- 
able to give a little closer attention to these par- 
ticular methods of growing crops of oak for the 
timber market. In the great majority of British 
woodlands oak is chiefly to be found in the copses. 
It is the principal tree among the overwood, and 
has always been the predominant standard from 
time immemorial. But the treatment there 
accorded to it has ever been merely a haphazard 
sort of rule-of-thumb measure. Even James I.’s 
command that in the New Forest ‘twelve stan- 
dels be left in every acre,’ and that ‘all saplings 
of oak that are likely to make timber’ should be 
excepted when carrying out the fellings, though 
a great move in an economic direction, did not 
go far enough to ensure more or less regular 
