FORESTRY. 157 



spoken of; cottonwoods seem to die, perhaps from an unsatisfied, inor- 

 dinate thirst; box elder and soft maple are not, in my opinion, just 

 what we want for shelter belts. But I am not going to attempt to give 

 any advice, that must be left for wiser if not older heads. In closing 

 my rather uninteresting paper, permit me to say that I hope the work of 

 the Minnesota Horticultural Society and the Minnesota Forestry Associ- 

 ation will be pushed, and that through them we of South Dakota may 

 gain large chunks of wisdom, and have our souls filled with a longing for 

 and a determination to secure a fair proportion of what we so much need 

 — trees. 



THE GERMAN SYSTEM OF FORESTRY. 



E. MEYER, ST. PETER, MINN. 



I am very sorry that my health prevents me from traveling in the win- 

 ter, and, therefore, cannot be with you at your interesting meeting, but I 

 cannot let it pass without saying a few words to help and encourage our 

 cause. I was once, many years ago, a forester in a country where f jrestry 

 is a science, where schools and colleges are established for the special pur- 

 pose of educating young men in the science of forestry and all the natural 

 sciences pertaining to it; where these students have to pass severe examin- 

 ations before they can be entrusted with the care and management of a 

 forest. If any one of the members of this association has traveled in Ger 

 many, and not merely gone there to see the big cities but visited the 

 country, he must have noticed the fine forests scattered all over the coun- 

 try in every part of the empire, which, by the care and will of the forester, 

 have been in many instances brought to a point of perfection. The mag- 

 nificent beech forests there are'an ornament to the empire, and cannot be 

 found to such an extent in any other country. If you go among these 

 beautiful trees with their white smooth bark, you will find the ground 

 as clean as a floor. There are no underbrush, weeds or grass to be found, 

 neither dry sticks, the cleaning of the trees being always picked up by the 

 poorer class of people and carried to their homes. 



Germany has been very fortunate, more so than any other country in 

 Europe, in having preserved a large part of the original forests which 

 covered the whole country at the time of the first settlements by the Ger- 

 man tribes, dating back several centuries before Christ. In regard to this 

 timber there has always been the idea more or less prevailing among the 

 German people that, having received these forests from their forefathers, 

 they had no right to appropriate the same for selfish purposes, to waste or 

 destroy them for one cause or another, but that this inheritance was to 

 be considered a capital, the same as a loan of money of which they might 

 use the interest but were in duty bound to hand over the principal in the 

 same or better condition to their next generation; and, in this way, many 

 forests have through hundreds of years descended to the present genera- 

 tion. What I. mean by the interest which a forest yields, is the yearly 

 growth, demonstrated in the number of cubic feet, which amount, in a 

 regulated forest where within the lines of each piece of timber the trees 

 are all of one age, can easily be ascertained by an educated forester; said 

 amount serving considerably as a guide in his forest operations. 



