General 
So also with the thorny thickets of sloe, blackthorn 
and hawthorn, through which the young trees have to 
force their way upwards to the light. One might com- 
pare them to the sticky bud scales of a horse-chestnut 
shoot which guard the young and green leaf rudiments 
from fungi and insect pests. 
Such a thicket would keep out roe and red deer or 
cattle, and so give some chance for the quick growth 
of ashes and birches and the slower and more sturdy 
development of young oak trees, 
So soon as the forest trees grow up and overshade 
the thorny rosaceous shrubs, these latter die away, 
but their life work is not wasted. Everything that they 
have made, every particle of carbonic acid or of nitrate 
used by them is returned to the soil, and is used again 
by the higher form of vegetation. 
In this connection the higher plant is both the taller 
and also the more complex. An oak or beech is of 
much more importance to the world than a hawthorn. 
Every green plant growing in such a wood, even the 
algee which form the green stain upon the bark, the 
ferns, mosses, and undergrowth is of use. For its waste 
products are returned to the soil, and form part of the 
regular annual manuring of leaf mould. 
The best authorities in forestry are careful to warn 
planters of the danger of taking away from the forest even, 
for instance, the apparently useless ferns and bracken, If 
this is permitted the soil must be impoverished. The most 
pernicious of all customs is that of collecting the dead 
leaves and actually burning them, and yet this wanton 
waste of the richest manure is by no means unusual. 
Just as, or even more, important is the part played in 
the growth of a wood by the fungi, bacteria, and various 
insects and other small animals. 
Many of these are kept by the forest; there is a 
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