INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN IN SCHOOL OF FORESTRY. 135 



has been stated, to lay it down as a principle that the reproduction 

 of this pine ought to be carried on by making a clean sweep of the 

 trees, followed immediately by artificial sowing ; and that coupes 

 cPensemencement ought only to be practised in exceptional circum- 

 stances, as, for example, on ground on a declivity. Forest science 

 counsels the former mode of procedure ; but financial considerations 

 enforce most frequently the adoption of the latter." 



M. banquette states in a note that the most important forests 

 of the pin sylvestre were formerly subjected to the mode a tire et aire. 

 Thus were they treated till 1820, when the system des compartiments 

 was substituted for this, in so far as the principal fellings were con- 

 cerned. In these fellings there were reserved a certain number of 

 trees, with a view to securing a re-sowing of the ground, and in 

 order to render more certain the natural reproduction. There is laid 

 upon the purchaser the burden of pulling up bushes and mosses, and 

 giving to the soil a slight tillage in alternate bands. 



"Such is, in few words, the treatment formerly given to those forests 

 in which we find to-day woods produced by self-sown seed perfectly 

 complete, and of all ages anterior to 1840. 



" The power of imposing works in connection with fellings having 

 been suppressed, now well nigh forty years ago, they ceased to cultivate 

 le parterre of coupes d'ensemencement. But soon they perceived that the 

 fellings were not replenished, or were replenished badly — or at the 

 least that they must wait too long a time before obtaining a sowing 

 sufficiently complete, and at that time they adopted the plan of 

 recovering them by artificial replenishings. 



" The easy execution, and the so to speak assured success of this 

 operation on the one hand, and the unsuccessful issue of coupes d'ense- 

 mencement on ground not prepared for them on the other hand 

 gradually gave rise to the conviction that it was for the general 

 interest to substitute in a general way artificial for the natural 

 replenishing. But they were not long in discovering that the new 

 mode of replenishing gave no better results than that it had super- 

 seded, and, as it is much more costly, they returned quite naturally 

 to the old practice of coupes d'ensemencement, and the preparation of 

 the ground for these fellings. 



" A very light tillage, a simple scraping of the moss which spreads 

 over dry ground, the opening of strips or of furrows in the soil too 

 strongly covered with herbage or bushe3, suffices to ensure the 

 natural replenishing of fellings with a little delay. 



