In opening out new falls where, for any given reason, a commencement cannot be made at the ride to the lee-side of a compartment, such lines of operation should be selected as will least expose the crops lying behind them to the danger of being thrown by wind on the fall being made (as, for example, ravines on hillsides, or where old crops stand to the windward of young thickets), because, in the general direction of the fall against the wind, protection for crops lying to the leeward can only be found by enabling them to become firmly rooted on the windward side, as takes place naturally when there is a proper alternation in the age-classes. Whether a permanent felling-series has to be begun in large compact woods, all of about the same age, or a temporary felling-series has to be arranged so as to save immature crops in vigorous growth from being felled prematurely, measures will often have to be taken to protect the leeward crops from being thrown by wind on becoming exposed to the violence of storms. Wherever any felling-series has to be begun where there are not already sufficiently broad roads, ravines, or other conditions ensuring a strong development of the root-system, then the protection of the crop to the leeward of this must be ensured by its being cut free by means of a Protective Fall or Severance (Ger. Loshieb). Such protective falls are of course nothing else but a necessary evil, and a temporary substitute for the natural security obtainable by a proper distribution of age-classes. They consist in clearing a strip of about to 1 chain (11 to 22 yards) in breadth in the older crop, in front of the part of the wood that requires protection. In very young woods this may be done in one fall, but in older pole-crops and in exposed situations it is best to make two falls at intervals of 5 or 10 years. Such severances or protective falls are quite unnecessary for copse or coppice, and are only rarely required in broad-leaved highwoods grouped in periodic falls. Protective Falls or Severances should always be made broadest for shallow-rooted Spruce crops, and should then be clear-felled; while for Pine and Larch it may often be sufficient simply to open up the back part of the older crop by a heavy thinning or partial clearance. But it is best to make a clean fall along the strip and then replant all of it except the narrow ride (if the severance takes place along the boundary-line of a compartment), and preferably with some broad-leaved kind of tree-e.g., Birch in Pine-woods. This will utilise the ground and give additional protection. As there is, of course, always a certain element of danger in venturing on such protective falls, they should only be made in places where the risk of windfall is not imminent, and at an age (if possible) when the trees along the edge of the crop to be cut free are still young enough to develop their root-system considerably-i.e., before the crop has cleared itself from branches, as the expansion of the root-system is dependent on the coronal development. And as this condition is again dependent on other factors, such as the soil and the kind of tree, it would be rash to suggest any fixed age as that up to which protective fellings may be made. In most cases they can be successfully made up to about 50 or 60 years of age in the German forests (see also chap. iii. p. 342). In order to be effective, the severance should take place at least 10 years before the regular fall has to be made in the older crop lying to the windward; but it is all the better if the measure can be carried out about 15 or 20 years in advance. Hence, in drawing up a working - plan which may perhaps only be meant to apply in its exact details for a period of 20 years, the protective falls required to give a freer hand to the management in the succeeding 20 years can usually be foreseen and thus provided for, the severance being made along the lines where the felling-series will then have to begin. It is of course essential that the falls for severance should invariably be made in the older crop to the windward of that to be protected. To cut into the latter-along the edge of a green lane, for example-in a place where the root-systems of the outside trees must already be stronger and better developed than those of the trees 30 or 50 yards inside the woods, would often prove a fatal mistake. Examples.-(1) A crop of 40 years old (Fig. 198) lies in the lee of a crop 60 years old, which will probably have to be felled about 20 years hence, before the former is mature. For the protection of the 40-year-old crop, when the annual fall cuts into the mature crop (then 80 years old) 20 years hence, the former should now (immediately) be cut clear by a protective fall or severance (a b) being made to a breadth of a chain to 1 chain in the latter; and this cleared strip should be at once planted up. (2) Three adjoining compartments (1, 2, and 3) of a working-circle (Fig. 199) have crops respectively aged 40-60 years (in 1) and 20-30 (in 2 and 3). On account of the felling-series fixed on, and for other reasons, it is desired that fellings should begin in compartment 3 about 30 years hence and before the felling-series carried out in compartment 1 shall have reached the W. end of compartment 2. To protect the windward edge of compartment 2, 30 years hence, the severance fall a b should now be made in compartment 3. (3) In two adjoining compartments (1 and 2) belonging to the same felling-series of a working-circle (Fig. 200), the crop in compartment 1 is 90-100 years old and mature, while that in compartment 2 is mostly 70-80 years old, but also comprises a young plantation 20 years old. The felling-series now commencing at the east end of compartment 1 (see dotted line) will reach compartment 2 in about 20 years' time, or long before the plantation is fit for felling. It can be preserved and protected from windfall by now making the protective clearance (a b c d) in the old crop to windward of it. 9. Different Methods of Fixing the Annual Fall.1-Even though most of the woodlands in Britain have hitherto not been managed on methodical lines, yet the fellings necessary in copse and coppices must of themselves have almost mechanically produced a more or less regular, though not a normal, arrangement of the annual falls. And the same may be said to be the case with regard to the self-sown Beech-woods on the chalk-hills, which have been worked on simple lines for centuries. But it must be different with regard to crops dating from the first third of the nineteenth century, when many landowners (and particularly in the Scottish Highlands) formed large plantations now mature. As these plantations were made on land which had previously been cleared of their original forest covering-mostly of Pine, no doubt, on the hillsides-and as their formation was not regularly spread over a long period of years, so that in course of time there might be something like a rough gradation of age-classes, they may either be treated as separate woods, each to be harvested when financially mature, or else they may be grouped together and worked as a whole. In the former case no particular scheme of management is necessary. Each crop will be felled at what seems to be the most profitable time, or the most convenient time for the owner, as the returns will only come in irregularly. In the latter case, however, if anything like a regularly sustained income is desired, some sort of working-plan, which need not necessarily be of any elaborate nature, is required to ensure this object and to regulate the annual fellings. Such 1 This word fall is the good old English term of forestry dating back for centuries, and it seems in every respect preferable to newly coined words, or French or German A "fall of timber" may be correctly spoken of as being "of so many acres," or as yielding or being of " so many cubic feet (or tons, or loads) of wood." terms. regulation can be effected by determining the annual fall according to one or other of methods based upon (1) The Woodland Area alone. (2) The Yield or Cubic Contents of (3) The Combination of Area and In each of these three methods the annual falls are grouped into periodic falls of 20 years each, and special attention is paid to the yield during the first period (or during the first 10 years only, as in Saxony). Yield. (4) The Proportion found to exist between the Actual and the Normal Increment and Growing-Stock in the Woods. (1) Fixing the Annual Fall from the Woodland Area alone.—This is unquestionably the oldest and the simplest of all the methods of regulating the annual fall in woodlands, and it has the advantages and the disadvantages inherent in a rough-and-ready arrangement. The leading idea in this method is that regularity in the annual fall must be established and maintained if the whole area be divided into as many equal portions as there are years in the rotation, and one such fall be made annually, because a normal distribution of the different age-classes will then be effected in the course of one rotation. This very simple system has two great disadvantages. If there is not already something like a normal distribution of the various age-classes, considerable loss may be incurred through having to harvest either immature or over-mature crops during the first rotation; and it does not take into consideration the variations in the fertility of the soil, which are almost certain to be found in woods of any large extent. This latter drawback can, however, be remedied by estimating, from the growing crops, the quality of each such annual fall, and increasing or reducing its area proportionately. But this method can only be applied in practice when the state of the crops seems to show that marked differences exist as to fertility. Any opinion thus formed should, if possible, be confirmed or modified by ascertaining from the estate books what has been the yield of the different falls in the past, though estate books will seldom be found to furnish exact data of this sort, going back accurately for any length of time. Both of these estimates should, indeed, be considered to determine whether or not the variations in the out-turn are due mainly to differences in the quality of the land, or are due to damage by ground game. But, in general, a very fair estimate as to the fertility of the soil can be formed from the nature of the weeds covering the ground in coppice-woods that stand thin on account of rabbits, and the annual falls may be proportionately increased or decreased in area (in the inverse ratio to their fertility), so far as the existing conditions permit of this. But it would be absurd to try and force matters in this direction if, as must usually be the case in British copses and coppices, the areas forming the different annual falls are definitely marked out by consisting of scattered patches or blocks surrounded by fields, &c. In such circumstances the annual falls can often, in actual practice, merely be arranged so as to extend to approximately equal (or equally productive) areas. If substantial differences in quality appear really to exist, then the proportionate increase or decrease in the area can be made by assessing the fertility of each area (and best according to local average yield tables, if available), reducing the whole tract to one common standard, and then reckoning the proportionate area of each annual fall. Regarding a full yield from a crop on very good soil as Class I., the other classes would be Good II., Medium III., Inferior IV., and Very Poor V., and the corresponding factors for conversion of area would respectively be 10, 0·8, 0·6, 0·4, and 0-2 of the highest class, on the supposition that inferior land will only yield one-half the fall obtained from good land, and only 0.4 of that from very good soil. Example.-Supposing a working-circle of coppice or copse has an area of 100 acres 100 and is worked with a rotation of 10 years, then the annual fall would be = 10 acres. If, however, differences of quality in the land are so marked that 30 acres are classifiable as Class II., 50 as III., and 20 as IV., yielding respectively only 0.8, 0.6, and 0.4 of what very good Class I. land should yield, and that the owner wishes the annual falls to be made proportionate to the soil and situation, then a conversion would have to take place. Reducing these areas to the "normal" or very best quality of land, they would respectively be equal to 30 × 0.8=24, 50 × 0·6=30, and 20 × 0.48 acres of Class I. land, and the whole extent of 100 acres will only yield the out-turn that 24+30+8=62 acres of 62 (acres) Class I. land would produce. Hence the factor of conversion will be =6'2, 10 (years) for Class III. = 10 acres, and for Class IV. and the proportionate annual falls will respectively be for land of Class II. annual falls in each class will be 6.2 15 acres; while the number of =1 for III. The 30 acres of Class II. will therefore yield falls for the first four years, the 50 acres of III. for the fifth to ninth years, and the 20 acres of III. will form the fall of the tenth yearor in whatever other order the age of the crops on the land may indicate to be best; and as there is a shortage of or acre in each of the falls from the first to the ninth year, this is, for convenience, thrown into the tenth fall, which consequently exceeds the true proportionate area by just so much. Or the falls may be worked out in another, but a similar, manner. Say, in the above example, that the estate accounts for the last 10 years show the net income from the 30 acres of the good land II. to have been £4 an acre, from the medium land III. £3, and from the inferior land IV. £21; then the average net income has been 30 yield 50 10 acres for III., and 10 =10 acres would be 10 =8 acres 13 acres for IV., and II. would 8 =3 falls, III. =5 falls, and IV. =1 falls. During one year there would consequently be a shortage in one of the falls in Class II., which would have to be made up by cutting part of IV., if anything like absolute equality were desired. This simple method of fixing the annual fall by area alone is only applicable to copse and coppice, for which it is certainly the most practical and satisfactory system of management. But it is unsuitable for highwoods, even if worked with a low rotation. It might certainly easily be applied to such crops as mixed conifer plantations, worked with a comparatively low rotation for the production of pitwood in mining districts by clearing and replanting; but even then the damage occurring every now and then from wind, snow, insects, or fire would almost to a certainty, sooner or later, interfere with the regular course of the falls. Again, it would be almost hopeless to endeavour |