600 Forestry Quarterly 



Chaux is one of the French forests in which the old rights of user 

 have been settled by awarding to each of the communities bor- 

 dering the forest, an area in which they carry on their own cutting 

 operations, without payment to the State for the timber, but under 

 supervision of state-appointed, communal-paid officers. There 

 are 29 such communal forests sliced out of the borders of Chaux, 

 averaging in area 600 acres each, and divided into felling series, 

 cut over regularly imder a simple coppice system by the villagers 

 and farmers sharing in its ownership. 



It is easy to see that a population which thus shares both in the 

 administration and profits of a forest will imderstand and sup- 

 port a wise and business-like administration of public forest lands 

 in general. The people by using a forest wisely have acquired a 

 forest imagination. The reverse is the case in Canada, where, 

 especially in Eastern Canada, the population is concentrated in 

 deforested area. It seems hopeless to expect people so situated, 

 without any living demonstrations of the profits of wise forest 

 administration before their eyes, to insist upon the proper care 

 and protection for vast public forest areas they have never 

 seen. The establishment and management of forest or well 

 situated tracts of now waste land in the popiilated portions of 

 Eastern Canada will serve a two-fold purpose in the production 

 of revenue, the supply of timber for domestic and industrial needs, 

 and the teaching of forestry to a population living in a coxmtry 

 four fifths of which is fit for forest or nothing. 



The staff employed in this small forest must astonish one ac- 

 customed to the other end of the forest scale in British Columbia. 

 The central body of State forest and the communal forests, bor- 

 dering roughly 50,000 acres in all, are administered by the one 

 staff consisting of 5 brigadiers (corresponding to rangers), 6 

 guards employed solely in the State forest, 12 guards engaged on 

 beats divided between State and communal forest and 2 guards 

 whose beats are entirely within communal forests. All are ap- 

 pointed by the State forest service. Ten of the employees of 

 this small area are furnished with houses and grovmd for gardens 

 and cattle. 



Forest management in France supports as many families per 

 square mile as agriculture in many parts of Canada. 



The long and slow progress of the Forest of Chaux to the present 

 system of management is an encouragement to those who may 



