648 LETTERS TO TEE EDITOR. [Feb. 



i^ETTERS TO THE ^DITOR. 



FOBESTBY IN THE CANTON VAUD. 



DEAR Sill, — The Swiss system of forestry has for long been 

 held up as a model worthy of imitation by those adminis- 

 trators who desire to introduce a new scheme of forest management 

 into any country which, like India or our great colonies, has suffered 

 from the unchecked destruction of its woods. Such imitation, how- 

 ever, is impossible at the outset. For the word forestry, including 

 the conservation as well as the reproduction of forests, presupposes 

 the existence of a regular system which has engaged the care of 

 successive generations. While the model, therefore, may be aimed 

 at as the ultimate result of remediary measures, such measures them- 

 selves cannot be formulated, but must depend upon the condition in 

 which administrators find the property it is intended first to restore 

 and then to conserve. 



The Canton Vaud, in common with the other cantons of the Swiss 

 Confederation, has happily for itself enjoyed the fostering care of its 

 forest administration for many generations, and the task, therefore, 

 of regulating the supply of timber according to the requirements of 

 the people, and of replanting forests periodically felled to meet such 

 supply, is comparatively an easy one. Exceptional causes, doubtless, 

 such as avalanches and tempests, cause a temporary difficulty and 

 involve a temporary outlay. But generally the cost of forest ad- 

 ministration can be almost certainly estimated, and the finances 

 adjusted with machine-like regularity. At a time when it is sought 

 to establish a Chair of Forestry in Scotland — the value of which, 

 without a practical field of outdoor observation and study, is some- 

 what more than doubtful — it may perhaps be of service to recon- 

 sider the broad outlines of the Swiss system and the practical 

 financial and material outcome of it. 



It must not be supposed that we wish to ignore the excellent 

 system of forest management obtaining on various estates in Scot- 

 land, the naming of any of which in particular would be invidious. 

 These, however, are the efforts of private individuals only, having 

 their parallel in the Forets Particulieres of Switzerland, with the 

 additional advantage in the latter country that proprietors can 

 obtain their seeds and plants in any number from the Government 

 nurseries. And here it may be mentioned, as showing the extent 

 to which this privilege is used, that the number of plants thus 

 obtained from the State nurseries in the Canton Vaud alone was, in 



