Silvicultural Practice. 103 
Deciduous Coniferous 
Percent. Percent. 
Total Forest ........ ...... 32.5 67.5 
High Forest ...... ......... 18.4 60.1 
Selection Forest ...... ..... 2.3 14 
Coppice ........ .......-.- 6.8 — 
Coppice with standards ...... 5. — 
Coniferous forest, of which 68% is pine and 30% 
spruce, prevails in Hastern and Middle Germany, de- 
ciduous forest, of which 20% is oak, the balance princi- 
pally beech, in the West and South. 
Coppice and coppice with standards are mostly in 
private hands as well as the coniferous selection forest, 
the State forests being almost entirely high forest, i. e. 
seed forest, other than under selection method. 
c. Methods of Improving the Crop. The credit of 
having first systematically formulated the practice of 
thinnings under the name of Durchforstung (for the first 
thinning), Durchplenterung (for the later thinnings), 
belongs to Hartig, although the practice of such thin- 
nings had been known and applied here and there before 
his time. He confined himself mainly to the removal of 
the undesirable species, dead and dying, suppressed and 
damaged trees, being especially emphatic in his advice 
not to interrupt the crown cover. Excepting the early 
weeding or improvement cuttings these thinnings were 
not to begin until the fiftieth to seventieth year in the 
broad-leaved forest, but in conifers in the twentieth to 
thirtieth year. 
The first attempt to explain on a biological basis the 
process and effect of thinning was made by Spith in a 
special contribution (1802). Cotta, in his Silviculture, 
