184 REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 



a seed year for oak occurs, after the acorns fall the ground is hacked up T 

 generally in lines about three feet apart, and the seed covered. 



Where no seed trees exist, or where a new forest is to be started, acorns are 

 sown broadcast, twenty-two bushels per acre, and hacked into the soil in lines. 

 Occasionally the whole area is dug up, but this is seldom considered necessary. 



The beech is not permitted to come in among the oak until the latter has a 

 start of a few years. It is then encouraged. By the time the oak is sixty years 

 old the ground beneath is well covered with beech. Where it fails to come in 

 from seed, small trees are planted. After the young growth is well started the 

 mother trees are gradually removed, in several cuttings made in the winter, 

 and the young growth is thinned out as necessity requires. 



The beech, though shaded, grows more rapidly than the oak, and when it 

 rises into the branches of the oak it is cut away and another generation started. 

 Thus under one crop of oak is grown two crops of beech. 



Pine, spruce, fir, beech and oak, one species of each, are the noble trees that 

 make up the great cultivated forests of Europe, and in those forests the trees are 

 raised from seed. But on many small areas coppice woods exist; that is, woods 

 in which the young growth comes as sprouts from stumps. Oak for tanbark and 

 firewood; chestnut for vine props; willow for basket twigs, and alder for turnery, 

 are the common coppice trees, although other broad-leaf trees — ash, elm, birch, 

 beech and maple — are somewhat so cultivated for firewood. The fuel wood of 

 southern Italy is mostly obtained from coppice. 



The trees are usually cut in late winter or early spring. At Naples the season, 

 which is governed by law, is from September to March, but at higher elevations 

 in southern Italy it continues through April. In Germany, oak for tanbark is 

 cut in May and June; willow in August or December. The alder is usually 

 grown in marshes and is cut while the ground is frozen. Coppice trees are 

 cut down close to the ground and with an oblique section, so that the surface 

 of the stump is quite smooth and allows the water to run off freely. Usually, 

 scattered among the coppice, are trees grown from seed. In fact, these are 

 indispensable to the perpetuation of coppice woods, as trees are soon killed by 

 repeated cutting. 



From the foregoing description of the manner in which forests are cultivated 

 it becomes apparent that, whether the trees are raised from seed or from coppice, 

 whether they are started in nurseries and afterwards set in the field, or are repro- 

 duced in the forest from self-sown seed, the forests all require thinning, and this 

 throws upon the market large quantities of small material. Mr. Gifford Pinchot, 

 in writino- of the Sihlwald, a forest of 2,400 acres in Switzerland, states that 



