127 
The Woodlands of England. 
because of the number of “ knee-pieces ” formed. 1 Modern forestry, 
on the other hand, aims at the production of “ clean ” straight 
timber, produced by growth of the trees in close canopy. 
It is easy to see how in this way the characteristic oak-hazel 
copses of southern England originally came into being. Many of 
the existing copses are certainly on the sites of ancient oakwoods : 
others again have no doubt been planted de novo. 
While hazel is usually the most abundant member of the shrub- 
layer, all the shrubs and trees which naturally belong to this type 
of wood, and which stand coppicing well, are represented in the 
coppice. 
Oak, hazel, and the other trees and shrubs of course sowed 
themselves naturally in the original woods, and a certain amount of 
felling stimulated their natural reproduction from seed ; but too 
drastic felling and clearing lead to deterioration of the soil in 
various ways, and check or even quite stop natural rejuvenation 
of the woodland. Constant exposure of the soil leads to the 
destruction of the natural humus and its characteristic woodland 
plant-carpet, the soil becoming closely covered with grass and other 
weeds, or to the surface caking hard, so that seedlings have little 
chance to grow; while extensive clearing of the seed-bearing trees 
and shrubs seriously diminishes the supply of available seed. The 
increase of ground game also, particularly of rabbits on the lighter 
soils, is a very serious factor working against natural rejuvenation. 
The effect of these influences has been that many of the woods are 
not rejuvenating themselves naturally, and have had to be planted 
up both with standards and coppice shrubs, to fill up serious and 
increasing gaps. Where this has been neglected, the vegetation 
has degenerated to scrub and grassland. The results of planting 
can often be seen in the woods ; but in many cases it is almost 
impossible to tell, in the absence of planting-records (which are 
very rarely available), how far it has been practised. Where, 
however, the coppice is pure hazel or pure ash, for instance, 
we may usually infer that the modern wood largely owes its 
composition to the choice of the forester ; while, on the other hand, 
where the coppice shows a great mixture of shrubs, many of which 
are economically useless, we may conclude that the composition of 
the shrub flora of the wood differs but little from the original state, 
though the additional illumination undoubtedly encourages the 
growth of the shrubs as a whole. 
See for instance Nisbet, op. cit. , p. 91, et. seq. 
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