146 THE NEW FORESTRY. 



CHAPTER XII. 

 THE THINNING OF PLANTATIONS. 



German Methods. — Their application to British Woodlands. — Execution of 

 the Work. — Pruning, &c. 



SECTION I. — GERMAN METHODS. 



GERMAN foresters copy nature within safe limits ; and we may 

 glance at nature's process first. In natural forests, at . the 

 beginning, the young trees usually spring up in far greater 

 numbers than can find room to grow for any considerable 

 length of time, with the result that the struggle for existence 

 soon sets in, and a very large proportion perish at an 

 early stage of existence, the weak growers being over- 

 topped and smothered by their stronger neighbours. From 

 beginning to end of the forest's existence this struggle 

 goes on, the weaklings perishing at an almost wholesale 

 rate while still young, the mortality becoming less and 

 less as the years go on, until the trees reach mature age and 

 the strongest only survive. In the natural beech forests of the 

 Continent the number of young trees that spring up is prodi- 

 gious, from eighty to a hundred being sometimes found on a 

 square yard, over great tracts, at the end of three or four years, 

 after which the smothering process sets in and they thin them- 

 selves out rapidly. In Plate No. 5 the mass of vegetation 

 shown in the foreground consists wholly of young beech 

 seedlings, knee deep, from seed shed by the previous crop — 

 natural regeneration. Artificial planting is resorted to only 

 to fill up blanks, which are not numerous, as the ground at 

 the end of the rotation period is usually bare and covered with 

 humous, and seedlings come up in abundance. During the 

 whole period from youth to age the overhead canopy of foliage 

 remains unbroken unless disturbed by accident, the tops 



