AMONG THE OAKS 107 
With the completion of its main growth in 
height, the time arrives when the oak requires 
a larger individual growing-space than it should 
hitherto have been permitted to enjoy. Confined 
within limits only prescribed by the danger of 
overcrowding, the oaks have been forced upwards 
so as to develop the greatest length of bole, 
and the straightest, cleanest stem which can be 
obtained under the given local circumstances ; 
and the future object of the forester must then 
of course be to make the young trees thicken 
in girth as rapidly as possible, so as to get their 
maximum of profit as a crop of timber in the 
shortest space of time. The ‘financial maturity’ 
or most profitable time of harvesting crops of 
timber, whether highwood, copse, or underwood, 
is, in fact, with regard to woodlands, very much 
what ‘the psychological moment’ is in human 
affairs. 
To those who are only acquainted with our 
British woodlands, the best-managed woods on 
the continent of Europe would at once appear 
unhealthily crowded, and consequently badly 
managed. But the fact admits of no argument, 
that woods of all descriptions must be far more 
