126 C E. Moss , W. M. Rankin and A. G. Tansley. 
usually coppiced along with the hazel. An interesting variant of 
the damp oakwood is seen in parts of Westmorland, as on the 
steep slopes of Naddle Forest above Haweswater, where there is 
an annual rainfall of 50 to 80 inches. Here the ash not only 
follows the courses of the streams, but spreads away from them in 
all directions; and, helped no doubt by the high rainfall, it 
dominates considerable areas of the wood, almost to the exclusion 
of the oak. Such woods may well be termed oak-ash woods, or 
perhaps, since birch is also very strong in them, oak-ash-birch 
woods. At higher levels, they pass into birch-ash woods, and 
eventually into birch-woods, thus forming an altitudinal series of 
a “damp” type, characterised by the presence of the ash, parallel 
with the series of drier woods described on p. 135, et seq .: (see also 
the scheme, p. 149). 
The birch (B etui a tomentosa , more rarely B. verrucosa ) is also 
a common constituent of damp oakwoods, and, like the other asso¬ 
ciated trees, is very often coppiced. 
One of the most ubiquitous shrubs of the damp oakwood is the 
hazel (Corylus Avellana); and this type of wood is very frequently 
grown as oak-hazel copse. Indeed the great majority of the damp 
oakwoods of southern England are oak-hazel copses. It seems 
probable that they arose in the following manner. The increasing 
demand for timber, especially in the later Middle Ages led to very 
extensive felling of the dominant oaks ; and the breaking of the 
forest canopy, which was thus brought about, led to a much 
increased access of light to the layer of shrubs below, and greatly 
stimulated their development. When the undergrowth was cut to 
the stumps under these new conditions, the shrubs were found to 
throw out vigorous coppice-shoots, which then came to be regularly 
harvested with a rotation of approximately ten or twelve years. A 
certain number of oaks were left as standard trees or allowed to 
grow up from the stools. Various old statutes, e.g., one of Henry 
VIII., enacted that at least twelve “ standels ” were to be left to the 
acre. These statutes originated in the alarm felt at the great 
decrease in the available supply of timber, the woods frequently 
being coppiced wholesale to supply the immediate demands for 
firewood, 1 fencing and the like. The standard oaks thus left at a 
considerable distance apart developed the freely branching habit 
characteristic of this tree when grown in the open. The kind of 
timber yielded by such trees was particularly useful in shipbuilding 
1 Particularly for charcoal in the ironstone districts of the Weald. 
