Current Literature. 159 



be of service to plant culture is the subject of the last chapter in 

 a book full of interest to any plant grower. 



B. E. F. 



Joseph Wessely's Berufsbiographie. Herausgegeben von Karl 

 Petraschek. Vienna. 1908. 319 pp. 



It is a rare case that a forester has a statue dedicated to him, 

 at the same time that his autobiography is brought out in an ele- 

 gant volume. This rare honor was accorded last year to Austria's 

 most noted forester, Joseph Wessely, in the park of the Hoch- 

 schule fur Bodenkultur at Mariabrunn near Vienna. 



The biography is really an inside history of the early develop- 

 ment of forestry in Austria, to which the writer devoted his life 

 from 1835, when he became assistant at the forest school, until 

 1898, when this real master of forestry died in his 84th year. 

 What Hartig was for Prussia, Cotta for Saxony, Wessely has 

 been for Austria, the reformer of its forestry, and he had the 

 good fortune to see the fruit of his work and to receive the appre- 

 ciation of his colleagues without stint during his lifetime. 



He became a member of the incompetent Ministry for Soil- 

 culture in 1849, which he left before its collapse to become the 

 Director of the private forest school of the Maehrish-Silesian 

 Forest Association in 1852. Three years later he cast his for- 

 tunes with a private corporation, which had extensive forest 

 properties in Hungary, as their manager, but only for three years, 

 when in 1858 he undertook the re-organization of the forest 

 academy at Mariabrunn over which he presided for 12 years 

 laying the basis for its development into the School for Soil- 

 culture in 1875. After retiring, in 1870, he remained in private 

 life, devoting himself to literary work, in which he was most 

 prolific, with over 300 titles, among which 16 monographs, of 

 which best known is the classical work on Der europaische Flug- 

 sand. The occasion of his 81st birthday gave opportunity for 

 many expressions of appreciation on the part of the forestry 

 world of Austria. B. E. F. 



Die Besteuerung des Waldes. By Dr. Heinrich Weber. 

 Frankfurt A. M. 1909. 555 pp. Mk. 10.50. 



This is the first independent comprehensive publication in book 



