78 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE FARM 
stratification of their crowns at two levels, with scattering 
low shrubs nearer to the ground. This is the way in which, 
left to themselves, each “‘finds its level’ and its proper 
situation. Too much interference of the axe may keep down 
some of them and may make unusual opportunities for 
others; but it does not change the nature or needs of any 
of them. 
The groupings of the trees of different kinds will be seen 
to differ obviously, according to their several modes of 
reproduction. Copses of young trees, clustered about old 
ones, will be found springing up as ‘‘suckers’’ from the 
spreading roots of beech and choke-cherry and nanny-berry. 
Thickets composed of a mixture of tree-species spring up as 
seedlings in the place where a giant of the woods has fallen, 
leaving a good site temporarily unoccupied. In such a place 
the struggle for existence is apt to be severe. Groups of a 
few trees on a common root result from the growth of sprouts 
from stumps. Some trees, like the chestnut, when cut will 
come again unfailingly, and replanting is unnecessary for 
their maintenance. Others, like the white pine, rarely sprout 
from the base when cut down, and are renewed only from 
seed. Most trees sprout more freely if cut (or burned) 
when young. Dozens of sprouts will promptly spring from 
a healthy stump of oak or elm, but only a few of them— 
two or three or four as a rule—can grow to full stature: 
the others are gradually eliminated in the competition for 
light and standing room. The changes in composition of 
the wood-lot that follow in the wake of the ax are not so great 
as one would at first suppose; for nature, if unhindered by 
fires or by grazing, has her own ways of keeping a place for 
each of her wild species. 
Let us study the wood-lot first to see what nature is trying 
to do with it, and to find out what kinds of woody plants she 
is endeavoring to maintain there. There will be time enough 
