CERTAIN FEATURES OF GERMAN FORESTRY 
BY HOMER D. HOUSE 
German forestry, perhaps because it is the most scientifically 
developed of any in Europe, has been for many years a source of 
deep interest and profitable study on the part of American students 
of forest management and utilization. There are those who predict 
for America, before many decades shall have passed, forestry con- 
ditions similar to those now existing in Germany. That we may 
in time develop in America a scientific as well as practical scheme 
of forestry, no one can doubt, but that it will in any way resemble 
German methods seems wholly improbable, unless we can make 
over our methods of taxation and administration of public lands. 
German forestry pays its way. Forestry is a sort of government 
trust in Germany. Without the connivance of the government it 
would no more pay to grow timber for any purpose other than for 
firewood in Germany than in the United States. Germany imports 
vast quantities of timber, but the duty is so adjusted that it is a 
. paying proposition for the German states to invest money in long- 
time rotations of forest crops. With a high stumpage value, the 
owners of the German forests, either private or state, can afford to 
make a more complete utilization of all the products of the forest, 
can afford more careful methods in logging, and can afford the 
expense of replanting and protection. The entire expense is put 
where it belongs, that is, on everybody, because everybody is directly 
or indirectly a consumer of forest products. I wonder how many 
advocates of conservation of our forest resources in the United 
States realize that low tariff on imported timber means low stump- 
age values in our own forests and that low stumpage values mean 
waste and high speed in lumbering? 
The German forests present an almost endless variety of con- 
ditions with respect to management and utilization, and the observant 
forester will find therein much food for thought in connection with 
forest conditions which prevail at home and he will discover thervin 
many new ideas that will be of benefit to him in coping with 
American problems in forestry. 
The following sketches are taken at random from my notes with 
a view of presenting characteristic and interesting methods of pro- 
cedure in sylviculture, management and utilization, particularly of 
such ranges in the German forests as may well pay any student of 
forestry to visit who has the opportunity to travel. 
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