WOODLAND WORK AND WORKING PLANS 199 



then one of the latter must be divided into two or more 

 annual falls, or cleared in two or three years, as the case 

 may be. Or, if clearing is to proceed more rapidly, it may be 

 necessary to clear more than one compartment annually, 

 those most in need of clearing being selected first. When, 

 on the other hand, young or middle-aged plantations form the 

 bulk of the working circle, clearing must be delayed, or pro- 

 ceeded with on a small scale until they approach maturity, 

 when it may be gradually increased according to the crop 

 and market. Any attempt to arrange the felling in any 

 particular order is rarely possible ; neither is it necessary, 

 unless on shallow soils or in a wind-swept locality. Local 

 surroundings, differences of soil, condition of crop, and in 

 most cases landscape effect, will all exert their influence upon 

 the process of clearing, and these influences will probably 

 vary with each compartment. When both young and old 

 woods exist in the same compartment, the predominant class 

 of timber should decide the period of its fall. 



In the same way, any attempt to regulate the amount 

 of yield in timber or money within narrow limits is also 

 unnecessary, and is rarely possible without complicating the 

 plan of operations to an undesirable extent. On large 

 estates, where an annual sale of timber is held, the returns 

 may vary little from year to year, but too often the last 

 year's returns are only made to correspond with those of 

 the preceding by drawing upon the capital stock. To see a 

 steady income from the woods of an estate looks well on 

 paper, but to an owner who has the interests of his woods at 

 heart, it must be more satisfactory to know that their capital 

 value is increasing steadily, than that the annual income 

 gained from them is only got at the expense of his successors. 



A rough-and-ready allotment of the woodland area into 

 working circles having been done, the division of each 

 working circle into series of age classes should next be 

 carried out. For this purpose all ages may be conveniently 

 divided into five periods of twenty years each, calling all 

 ages between one and twenty the fifth period, twenty-one to 

 forty the fourth, and so on until all ages over eighty years 

 of age are reached, which will be Period 1. In this classi- 

 fication larch and Spanish chestnut should be considered 



