18 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



with it the forests. The kiefer becomes less frequent as more fertile and 

 mountainous soils are encountered, and big spruce and fir stands with some 

 hardwood become frequent. Near Breda, between Berlin and Dresden, I 

 encountered the first stand of oak growing under Sylvester pine, evidently 

 the same method of reclamation of the heather (Callina Vulgaris) moorg 

 into hardwood stands as in France. A little farther on, two miles from the 

 town of Elm, is an interesting forest of fir, bordered with larch. This larch 

 border, both for spruce and fir, I was to encounter very frequently there- 

 after. There is a considerable market for larch in Germany, and as it is a 

 hardy, intolerant mountain tree over there, the best way to grow it is as a 

 wide forty-foot border around a spruce or fir stand. The fresh yearly growths, 

 yellow-green in September, of the twig-ends of European larch are catkins 

 of needles five to seven inches long (the catkins, not the needles) which later 

 divide up into the characteristic little tassels of ten or twelve needles sessile 

 on the twig. 



At Dresden I again revisited the forests of the Dresdener Haide and the 

 Neiderwald in the Saxon Switzerland. Much young spruce is now being 

 grown on kiefer soil in the Haide and seems to be coming along admirably. 

 In the mountains both spruce and fir, properly thinned on selection forest 

 methods, were reaching IG inches diameter on GS-years growth, and were 

 being logged on 70 and 80 year revolutions, — an encouraging advance over 

 the usual 100-year revolution, and due entirely to judicious thinning. All 

 regeneration was by planting, usually on the hole system, as I saw but one 

 forest on the hillock system of Baron Manteuffel. The larch border is here 

 a good deal in evidence. The photographs hereto of the forest operations in 

 the mountains will give one a better idea of spruce and fir culture than any 

 words of mine. In general, standard forest on slopes up to 45° ; steeper than 

 this, selection forest. 



Leaving the Dresden district our route lay through Thuringia and into 

 Hesse. After Leipsic this entire country becomes mountainous with spruce 

 predominating, — the spruce which has made the Saxon foresters famous. The 

 hills and plains were covered with it, always with the bare 100-foot strip 

 along the railroad right of way characteristic of the Saxon fire protection 

 regulations. The spacing at planting was almost as narrow as kiefer, — from 

 one metre to four feet setting out, and left so up to fifteen years, by which 

 time the lower reaches of the forest would be black with suppressed branches. 

 As with young kiefer, all the eight to fifteen-year growth was trimmed up to 

 six feet from the ground of its dead cleaning branches for at least the first 

 section back from the railroad. I saw no young spruce set out under three 

 years old, and the forests held sections of every conceivable age up to the 

 end of the revolution, which was about 70 years. All the first thinning spruce 

 finds its way to the wood pulp industries, in which this part of Germany 

 abounds, being in a measure the chemical center of Germany. The four-inch 

 stuff of the 25-year thinnings is used in a large measure for scaffolding poles 

 in building construction, the poles being lashed with rope and taken down 

 after the mason work, stucco, etc., is finished on the building. This method 

 of scaffolding is also becoming quite common with our own contractors, 



