HIGHWOODS, COPSES, ETC. 273 
and fir can be grown; and these are, for many 
soils and situations in Britain, the only crops 
it would be profitable to cultivate on any large 
scale. No broad generalisation can, however, be 
made with regard to any such matter in Forestry, 
owing to the bulky nature of wood crops and 
the expense of transport for any distance by land. 
When oak-bark was well paid, coppices worked 
in a rotation of fourteen or sixteen years yielded 
far higher returns than highwoods; and some 
of the osier-holts in the fen districts give a 
more handsome profit than oak-coppice ever 
did. Again, where there is any fair demand for 
charcoal for gunpowder, or for cigar-boxes, or 
the like, alder-coppice may also, under suitable 
conditions as to soil, prove much more remu- 
nerative than either copse or highwoods. And 
in very many parts of Britain copse has peculiar 
advantages of its own, which make it the system 
that must find special preference on many estates. 
The law of entail makes an important difference 
between timber and coppice, the former being 
under English law regarded as part of the estate, 
the money arising from the sale of which is 
treated as capital on which only the interest is 
s 
