FORESTS OF GERMANY. 823 
my, however clearly the importance of a wise administration of 
this great public interest might have been understood. The 
woods which controlled and regulated the flow of the river- 
sources were very often in one jurisdiction, the plains to be 
irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and desolated by tor- 
rents, in another. Concert of action, on such a subject, between 
a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties, was obviously impos- 
sible, and nothing but the permanent union of all the Italian 
States under a single government can render practicable the 
establishment of such arrangements for the conservation and 
restoration of the forests, and the regulation of the flow of the 
waters, as are necessary for the full development of the yet 
unexhausted resources of that fairest of lands, and even for the 
maintenance of the present condition of its physical geography. 
The Forests of Germany. 
Germany, including a considerable part of the Austrian 
Empire, from character of surface and climate, and from the 
attention which has long been paid in all the German States to 
sylviculture, is in a far better condition in this respect than its 
more southern neighbors; and though in the Alpine provinces 
of Bavaria and Austria the same improvidence which marks 
the rural economy of the corresponding districts of Switzerland, 
Italy, and France, has produced effects hardly less disastrous,* 
* Asan instance of the scarcity of fuelin some parts of the territory of 
Bavaria, where, not long since, wood abounded, I may mention the fact that 
the water of salt-springs is, in some instances, conveyed to the distance of 
sixty miles, in iron pipes, to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it down. 
In France, the juice of the sugar-beet is sometimes carried three or four 
miles in pipes for the same reason. 
Many of my readers may remember that it was not long ago proposed to 
manufacture the gas for the supply of London at the mouths of the coal- 
mines, and convey it to the city in pipes, thus saving the transportation of the 
coal; but as the coke and mineral tar would still have remained to be dis- 
posed of, the operation would probably not have proved advantageous. 
Great economy in the production of petroleum has resulted from the appli- 
cation of cast-iron tubes to the wells. instead of barrels; the oil is thus carried 
