814 FORESTS OF FRANCE. 
estimate, was not very much too great for permanent main- 
tenance, though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that 
it would have been sound policy to fell the woods and clear 
land in some provinces, while large forests should have been 
planted in others.* During the period in question France 
neither exported manufactured wood or rough timber, nor de- 
rived important collateral advantages of any sort from the de- 
struction of her forests. She is consequently impoverished and 
crippled to the extent of the difference between what she actu- 
ally possesses of wooded surface and what she ought to have 
retained. + 
The force of the various considerations which have been sug- 
gested in regard to the importance of the forest has been gene- 
rally felt in France, and the subject has been amply debated in 
* The view I have taken of this point is confirmed by the careful investiga- 
tions of Rentzsch, who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire 
surface at twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes 
that near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation 
from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See Rentzsch’s 
very valuable prize essay, Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volks- 
wirthschaft, cap. viii. 
The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the Ger- 
man States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any growth 
but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her mountains 
expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and because at least 
her southern provinces are more frequently visited both by extreme droughts 
and by deluging rains. 
+ In 1863, France imported lumber to the value of twenty-five and a half 
millions of dollars, and exported to the amount of six and a half millions of 
dollars. The annual consumption of France was estimated in 1866 at 212,- 
000,000 cubic feet for building and manufacturing, and 1,588,500,000 for fire- 
wood and charcoal. The annual product of the forest-soil of France does not 
exceed 70,000,000 cubic feet of wood fit for industrial use, and 1,300,000,000 
cubic feet consumed as fuel. This estimate does not include the product of 
scattered trees on private grounds, but the consumption is estimated to exceed 
the production of the forests by the amount of about twenty millions of dol- 
lars. It is worth noticing that the timber for building and manufacturing 
produced in France comes almost wholly from the forests of the state or of 
the communes,—J ULES CLAV, in Revue des Deux Mondes for March 1, 1866, 
p. 207. 
