166 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
leaves, but as a tree of the forest it is not so pro- 
fitable in the highwoods as many of our indige- 
nous trees. Here it makes considerable demands 
on warmth of situation, or sheltered localities, 
and though very moderate in its requirements 
as to mineral strength of the soil, it needs a deep 
sandy or sandy loam to make really good growth. 
Cold land and stiff clays are not favourable to its 
development ; even stony or gravelly land, warm 
and well sheltered, is better than these. It ex- 
hibits antipathy to limy land, and even a small 
percentage of carbonate of lime in the soil at once 
affects its development. Another drawback to its 
cultivation in highwoods is that it often at about 
the age of fifty to seventy years becomes unsound 
with ring-shakes, which spoil it for beams and scant- 
ling. Its wood is useful for such purposes as gate- 
posts, fencing, hop-poles, cask-hoops, and the like, 
all of which are procurable from coppice-growth. 
Rarely maturing its seed in Britain, like the other 
non-indigenous trees, English elm, lime, poplar, 
and some willows, it has a very strong reproduc- 
tive capacity both in the form of stool-shoots and 
root-suckers. It shoots freely from the stool, 
and the stubbs retain their coppicing power for a 
