280 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
the time comes when light-demanding crops, like 
larch and Scotch pine, require to be partially 
cleared and underplanted, usually at an age vary- 
ing from thirty to forty-five years, according to 
the soil and the past treatment accorded to the 
crop. In some plantations known to me the 
ravages of fungous disease have been such that 
patches of thirty-year-old larch have had to be 
thinned so freely in the past on account of 
canker that underplanting is already requisite, 
even without the clearance of any of the re- 
maining stems, except such as are now also 
badly cankered. 
As already remarked, although highwoods 
yield on the whole the best returns where a 
large capital is available for investment in timber 
crops, yet copse or ‘stored coppice’ is a system 
also offering considerable attractions to owners 
of woodlands which are of too small an area to 
be worked as highwoods with a regular annual 
fall. As in high timber crops, absolute regu- 
larity of treatment cannot be effected, nor should 
it be aimed at, because changes in the quality, 
depth, freshness, and other physical properties 
of the soil and situation must of course neces- 
