68 ELEMENTARY FORESTRY. 
until the seedlings get well started, and to prevent this it may 
be necessary to cut back the crowding plants every summer. 
It is quite common in European forests to see patches of 
land, perhaps four feet square, at twenty-foot intervals, which 
have been stripped of their mossy cover and sown to seed. 
These afford a sort of nursery throughout the forest, from which 
seedlings may be transplanted and on which a number of seed 
ling plants are left and form a good forest cover. 
Mound Planting is a term which signifies the planting of 
trees on mounds or on the surface of the land. This is some- 
times done on wet lands for the purpose of getting the roots 
above standing water, and it is a practice which can be followed 
in the case of several trees that do well upon rather moist soil, 
although they may die if put at once into standing water when 
young. 
Regeneration by Cuttings. There are few trees that can 
be grown in general practice from cuttings, but it is the best way 
to start willows, since seedlings of them are generally quite diffi- 
cult to obtain. Some species of the poplar can also be grown to 
best advantage in this way. 
Regeneration by Sprouts and Suckers. Some trees, 
such as the willow, poplars, oaks, chestnuts and maples renew 
themselves very readily by sprouts and suckers. Land that is 
managed on this plan for renewal is termed coppice. With the 
exception of the willow and possibly one or two other trees, the 
growth from coppice is not so large as that from seedlings, and 
it is seldom employed for other purposes than the production 
of firewood. In order to get the best growth in this way, the 
trees should be cut close to the ground when they are dormant, 
and the stumps left highest in the center, so they will tend to 
shed water and not rot. The advantage of cutting close to the 
ground is that the sprouts that come out from the trunk soon 
get roots of their own, which makes them more durable than 
when they depend entirely upon the old stump roots and they 
are much less liable to be broken off in high winds. 
Pollarding consists in cutting back the side branches of a 
tree, or cutting off the main stem at a few feet from the ground. 
The branches may be cut off close to the main stem or at a short 
distance from it, the latter method being preferable. New 
