English Coppices and Copsewoods. 483 



or Samplers (Charles JL), Heirs and Tellers (Hants, Gloucester 

 etc. ; but the law enforced their retention, and they received 

 far more attention than has now been the case for long past. It 

 is only with regard to the best relative proportions regarding- 

 the storing and the clearance of the standards that we can 

 with any advantage consult the more methodical measures 

 adopted in copsewoods in France and Germany. As regards 

 cutting almost flush with the ground at the fall ; selecting 

 young stores from among seedling saplings, root-suckers and 

 the best grown of the stool-shoots ; assisting natural regenera- 

 tion and reproduction, and filling up of blank spaces by 

 layering; weeding the young crop, and judicious pruning 

 — about all these and many other practical matters 

 we have nothing whatever to learn ; we need simply 

 try and revert to the better manner in which these 

 operations seem to have been carried out in the days of 

 Stevenson and of Evelyn. One is, of course, more or less 

 tied down by the nature of the crop already on 

 the ground, but the local market available must indicate 

 which are the kinds o underwood to encourage, and 

 what is likely to be the most profitable rotation. Apart from 

 oak-coppices no longer profitable, and ash-beds and alder- 

 moors of small extent, copses (like highwoods) are likely to 

 yield the best returns when they are not pure, but mixed ; 

 but in the very common mixtures of hazel, ash, oak, birch., 

 sallow, sycamore, chestnut, lime, maple, beech, etc., the local 

 conditions will show which kinds of wood deserve the 

 preference in selecting stores and in plashing layers. In the 

 vast majority of cases ash and oak, but especially ash, must 

 prove the most profitable standards, while ash, hazel and 

 chestnut will usually be the most valuable part of the under- 

 wood. Fixing the best rotation for mixed coppices is by no- 

 means an easy matter in some parts of the country. For 

 example, near the Severn fisheries, hazel rods of about S3ven 

 years' growth are in demand, while ash has no good sale 

 till about twelve years old. To split the difference and 

 make the fall every nine or ten years is a compromise which 

 may perhaps cause loss on both the hazel and the ash ; and 

 in such cases the factor ruling the situation is whatever 



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