324 
LOPPING AND TRIMMING. 
Besides these evils, the removal of the leaves deprives the 
soil of that spongy character which gives it such immense 
value as a reservoir of moisture and a regulator of the flow of 
springs; and, finally, it exposes the surface roots to the drying 
influence of sun and wind, to accidental mechanical injury 
from the tread of animals or men, and, in cold climates, to the 
destructive effects of frost. 
The annual lopping and trimming of trees for fuel, so com¬ 
mon in Europe, is fatal to the higher uses of the forest, but 
where small groves are made, or rows of trees planted, for no 
other purpose than to secure a supply of firewood, or to serve 
the species to be employed in planting a new or restoring a decayed forest. 
When ground is laid bare both of trees and of vegetable mould, and left 
to the action of unaided and unobstructed nature, she first propagates trees 
which germinate and grow only under the influence of a full supply of 
light and air, and then, in succession, other species, according to their 
ability to bear the shade and their demand for more abundant nutriment. 
In Northern Europe, the larch, the white birch, the aspen, first appear; 
then follow the maple, the alder, the ash, the fir; then the oak and the 
linden; and then the beech. The trees called by these respective names 
in the United States are not specifically the same as their European name¬ 
sakes, nor are they always even the equivalents of these latter, and there¬ 
fore the order of succession in America would not be precisely as indicated 
by the foregoing list, but it nevertheless very nearly corresponds to it. 
It is thought important to encourage the growth of the beech in Den¬ 
mark and Northern Germany, because it upon the whole yields better 
returns than other trees, and particularly because it appears not to 
exhaust, but on the contrary to enrich the soil; for by shedding its leaves 
it returns to it most of the nutriment it has drawn from it, and at the same 
time furnishes a solvent which aids materially in the decomposition of its 
mineral constituents. 
When the forest is left to itself, the order of succession is constant, and 
its occasional inversion is always explicable by some human interference. 
It is curious that the trees which require most light are content with the 
poorest soils, and vice versa. The trees which first appear are also those 
which propagate themselves farthest to the north. The birch, the larch, 
and the fir bear a severer climate than the oak, the oak than the beech. 
“ These parallelisms,” says Vaupell, “ are very interesting, because they 
are entirely independent of each other,” and each prescribes the same 
order of succession .—Bogens Indvandring , p. 42. 
