ILLUSTRATED GUIDE. 25 



the seeds of the felled trees, and it is by this that the 

 forest are re-formed. A thick brushwood is sooii 

 established by the young plants, if neither the hoofs nor 

 the teeth of cattle are allowed to injure them. ?ut here, 

 there is one danger : they should not be left too thick ; 

 they would injure each other, keep off the beneficent 

 rays of the sun, and never become fine trees. Judicious 

 thinning, therefore, should be practised every three or 

 four years. 



In spite of all precautions, certain spots will suffer ; 

 some from fire, some from sudden rushes of water after 

 heavy rains which carry off the top-soil, and so on. 

 The vacancies due to these different causes must not be 

 neglected. It is through breaches of this sort that the 

 enemy, sterility, finds an entrance. How shall we op- 

 pose his attacks ? Fill the naked spots by re-planting. 



Of re-planting I will speak farther on. At present, I 

 must content myself with saying that, to re-plant a bare 

 spot in the middle of a wood, it is only needful to take 

 from the space around it the young trees, which, being 

 set immediately after being dug up, will infallibly take 

 root at once. 



By treating it in this fashion, every farmer can keep 

 his reserve of bush entire for an indefinite period ; not 

 only for his own life-time, but for the generations that 

 shall come after him, if, be it understood, they continue 

 to observe the same precautions. 



And it is not only the farmers who are concerned in 

 what I have said about the re-planting of the bare spots 

 being one of the important points connected with the 

 restoration of the forests. Those lumbermen, who hold 

 timber limits on long leases, ought, for their own sakes, 

 to carry out the re-planting of the clearings as often as 

 may be necessary. The governments of the different 



