THE TAILLIS OR COPPICE. 
315 
Sylviculture. 
The art, or, as the Continental foresters call it, the science 
of sylviculture has been so little pursued in England and 
America, that its nomenclature has not been introduced into 
the English vocabulary, and I shall not be able to describe its 
processes with technical propriety of language, without occa¬ 
sionally borrowing a word from the forest literature of France 
and Germany. A full discussion of the methods of sylvicul¬ 
ture would, indeed, be out of place in a work like the present, 
but the almost total want of conveniently accessible means of 
information on the subject, in English-speaking countries, will 
justify me in presenting it with somewhat more of detail than 
woidd otherwise be pertinent. 
The two best known methods are those distinguished as 
the taillis , copse or coppice treatment,* and the futaie , for which 
I find no English equivalent, but which may not inappro¬ 
priately be called the full-growth system. A taillis , copse, or 
coppice, is a wood composed of shoots from the roots of trees 
previously cut for fuel and timber. The shoots are thinned 
out from time to time, and finally cut, either after a fixed 
number of years, or after the young trees have attained to cer¬ 
tain dimensions, their roots being then left to send out a new 
progeny as before. This is the cheapest method oi manage¬ 
ment, and therefore the best wherever the price of labor and 
of capital bears a high proportion to that of land and of tim¬ 
ber ; but it is essentially a wasteful economy. If the wood¬ 
land is, in the first place, completely cut over, as is found most 
convenient in practice, the young shoots have neither the shade 
nor the protection from wind so important to forest growth; 
and their progress is comparatively slow, wdiile, at the samp 
time, the thick clumps they form choke the seedlings that may 
* Copse, or coppice, from the French couper, to cut, signifies properly 
a wood the trees of which are cut at certain periods of immature growth, 
and allowed to shoot up again from the roots ; but it has come to signify, 
very commonly, a young wood, grove, or thicket, without leteience to its 
origin, or to its character of a forest crop. 
