304 English Coppices and Copsewoods. 



case. " If copses were so divided as that every year there 

 might be some felled, it were a continual and a present 

 profit." Just so ; equality of out-turn is one of the specific 

 objects aimed at in an up-to-date Working Plan or Scheme of 

 Management. Again, to induce a good thick flush of stool- 

 shoots and root-suckers, he counsels the fall of the timber trees 

 and the underwood being made " as near the ground as may 

 be. . . . The cutting slanting, smooth and close is of 

 great importance. . . . Cut not above half a foot from 

 the ground, nay the closer the better." So, too, in advising 

 that " in thin copses it is profitable to lay some boughs 

 athwart, which will be rooted to advantage against next fall," 

 he clearly indicated one of the best possible ways of filling 

 up blank patches, by means of layering or plashing- He 

 also very correctly remarks regarding stoles or suckers that 

 u trees which are apt to grow from the running- root thicken 

 the wood exceedingly," although the kinds of trees he advises 

 to be planted for this purpose (elm, cherry, poplar, sallow, 

 and service) are not those which can usually be grown with 

 profit in mixed coppices nowadays. 



Simple coppice, without standards, was apparently not 

 then common, though the standards in copse were sometimes 

 pollarded. " In the meantime, there are some who find it not 

 so profitable to permit so many timber -trees to stand in the 

 heart of copses, but on the skirts and near the edges, where 

 their branches may freely spread and have air, without 

 dripping and annoying the subnascent crop ; nor should they 

 be shread (i.e., lopped or pollarded), which commonly makes 

 them grow knotty." 



The selection of stores, a matter ot the first importance, 

 was to be carefully made. "When you espy a cluster of plants 

 growing as it were all in a bunch, it shall suffice you that 

 you preserve the fairest sapling, cutting all the rest away " 

 — a rule which, of course, still obtains, though saplings 

 sprung from seed, or else suckers, deserve the preference over 

 stool-shoots. 



With regard to the standards (except in the case of oak) he 

 recommended a little judicious pruning, as the modern 

 forester would to-day whenever funds are available and the 



