COTTA'S PREFACK. 



If the inhabitants of Germany should leave their country it 

 would be all grown up with woods within a century. Since 

 there would be nobody to use them, the soil would be enriched 

 and the woods would not only increase in size, but in productive 

 power. If, however, the people returned again and made just as 

 large drafts as before for wood, litter and pasturage, the wood- 

 lands, even with the best forest management, would again not 

 only be reduced in size, but also become less fertile. 



Forests form and thrive best where there are no people — 

 and hence no forestry, and those are perfectly justified who say : 

 Formerly we had no forestry science and enough wood ; now we 

 have that science, but no wood. 



One could say with the same justice : Those people are health- 

 ier who do not need a physician than those who do. But it 

 would not follow that the physicians are to be blamed for the 

 diseases. There would be no physicians if there were no diseases, 

 and no forestry science without deficiency in wood supplies. This 

 science is only a child of necessity or need, and need is therefore 

 its natural concomitant ; hence the phrase should be : We have 

 now a forestry science because we have a dearth of wood. 



Forestry, however, does not offer au}^ nostrums and can do 

 nothing against the course of nature. The celebrated physician 

 Verdey said : ' ' The good physician lets people die ; the poor 

 one kills them." With the same right one can say the good for- 

 ester allows the most perfect forests to become less so ; the poor 

 one spoils them. That is to say, just as the good physician can- 

 not hinder that men die because that is the course of nature, so 

 the best forester cannot hinder that the forests, which came to us 

 from past times, become less now they are being utilized. 



German}' formerl}' contained immense, perfect, most fertile 

 forests. But the large forests have become .small, the fertile have 

 become sterile. Each generation of man has seen a smaller 

 generation of wood. Here and there we admire still the giant 

 oaks and firs, which grew up without any care, while we are 

 perfect!}^ persuaded that we shall never in the same places be 

 able, with any art or care, to reproduce similar trees. The grand- 



