Forest Culture. 87 



of forestry followed, and so keen is the ambition for a 

 position in the government woods, that there is no lack of candi- 

 dates. The result of this care and zeal is a system of forest cul- 

 tivation almost as carefully conducted as field tillage. " The 

 forests have all been surveyed, valued and divided into blocks, 

 and there are accurate maps representing the extent and situation 

 of each district, and whatever be the size of the woods every tree 

 is recorded," and no tree can be cut unless it shows the mark of 

 the overseer. That this system is conducted on a practical basis 

 appears from the fact that only a little more than half the income 

 from the state forests is required to pay all the annual expenses of 

 the whole system. In France, as in Germany, the care of the 

 forests constitutes a state department ; the magnitude of the oper- 

 ations may be inferred from the fact that, besides the work in 

 the Alps provinces and elsewhere, a forest one hundred and fifty 

 miles long, and two to six miles wide, has been formed along the 

 sand dunes of the western coast, by which millions of acres have 

 been reclaimed and made arable. The French school of forestry 

 at Nancy is one of the best. Its standard of admission is not so 

 high as is maintained in Germany, and the term of study is two 

 years less ; but it is a very well equipped and active institution. 

 The British government has made arrangements for the training 

 in this school of young men destined for her forest service in 

 India, five or six of whom are sent out every year. 



Returning to our own country, we find that very little has been 

 done to preserve or restore forest landr, and, worst of all, that 

 total ignorance of the interests involved is well nigh universal. 

 Generally speaking, the American has regarded the forests of his 

 country in one of two aspects: first, ai affording means for great 

 and rapid profit ; second, as obstacles to the culture of the 

 ground. Yet greater knowledge is beginning to produce its 

 natural fruit. We may discriminate, perhaps, two phases of 

 growing interest in this matter. In the older states of the east, 

 the once wooded hills and mountains being stripped, and the 

 people beginning to awaken to the serious consequences, consid- 

 erable effort is being put forth to preserve the existing forests, and 

 to make plantations. Moreover, much land, either worn out or 



7 — HORT. 



