148 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



existence, when he does not burn it in oi-dor to gain a i)Oor and tein])<)rarv 

 j)astiire ground; because the onl.v thing he knows is how to grow a little coin 

 or obtain a small quantity of wool or of milk. 



The problem, therfore, is not so much a matter of wasting time in the 

 consideration of more or less useless juridical (questions, as to whether or no it 

 is the case to deal with the forest from the point of view of its secondary 

 effects, but rather to study a way of placing forest production on a sure 

 technical basis, because where a forest is naturally suitable, it will also be 

 economically satisfactory. 



ITALY^S ENORMOUS IMPORTATION 



Economic bases are not lacking when there is the desire to utilize them. 

 Timber is the product which has most increased in price on the international 

 market, having increased by :{00% from 1860 up to the present day. At the 

 ])resent time, Italy imports |45,000,000 worth of forest products every year, 

 that is to say, one-fourteenth of her total imports. Our most imi)ortant im- 

 porter, after Austria, is the United States, for a sum of about .|5,800,000. 

 The excedent of the importation upon the exportation of forest products in 

 Italy is 117,000,000, about one-seventh of the total excedent of imports upon 

 exjiorts; and this difference is exceeded only by that of metals and mineral 

 products, especially coal. But while the latter is a deficit with which Italy 

 can do nothing directly, the former deficit is our own fault and we could re- 

 pair it, instead of paying so many millions abroad, much more than we ])ay 

 foi- wheat and flour and meat, the scarcity of which is so justly lamented. 



A few figures will be sufiicient index of the deficiency and inferiority of 

 forest production in Italy, brought about by the negligent way in which it has 

 been conducted. Whereas in countries which have a progressive sylviculture, 

 like (Jermauy and Austria-Hungary, the annual timber ])roduct of an acre of 

 forest is a total of 45 cubic feet ; in Ital}' this product is only 30 cubic feet. 



A more serious side of the question, however, is that we produce only 

 0.75 cubic feet per acre per annum of the jiroduct which has really the great 

 est value — timber — while the other producing countries nearly quintuple this 

 amount, having a timber product of 18 cubic feet. The consequence of this is 

 that our timber consumj)ti(»n is also abnormally restricted, being 3.7 cubic 

 feet per inhabitant per annum, instead of 15 cubic feet, as in the industrially 

 progressvie countries of Euroi)e, like England, (iermany and Switzerland. 

 There is a vast difference between these figures and those of the United States, 

 where the annual consumi)tion per inhabitant is 160 cubic feet. 



This enforced restriction in the consumption of wood, and especially of 

 linihcr, is a serious impediment to many national industries. It was well, 

 therefore, that the Second Italian Forest Congress, held at Turin on August 

 2S-30, 1911, for the purpose of indicating the direction taken by the positive 

 forest policy afhrmed in the first Congress at Bologna, gave particular atten- 

 tion to the problem of forest i)roduction. This is the foundation of the Italian 

 forest policy as of every other, because it alone puts this policy on a sure and 



