REPORT OF THE STATE BOTANIST IQI3 65 
7 THE THARANDT FOREST ACADEMY 
Tharandt is about 30 minutes ride on the cars from the central 
station of Dresden and well repays a visit by one interested in 
forestry education. The school is purely technical and is not at- 
tached to any university, but is under the direction of the forest 
department of Saxony. The equipment is excellent in every way 
and especially fine is the instruction and equipment of the depart- 
ments of surveying and sylviculture. Well equipped also are the 
physical and chemical laboratories. The history of the Tharandt 
school is inseparably associated with the name of Heinrich Cotta, 
who died here in 1844 and is buried in the forest garden above the 
valley surrounded by 80 oaks planted there by his pupils prior to 
his death. 
The forest garden at Tharandt is a sort of arboretum and is 
interesting on account of the fairly large number of foreign trees 
of large size which it contains. It is not a “made” or refilled 
garden and has in consequence several varieties of soil and ex- 
posure. For the most part the specimens are well labeled, but 
occasionally one sees some errors which are not unexpected in a 
large garden with a small staff and a head gardener better trained 
in the care and raising of trees than in their nomenclature. The 
Garden also contains a small museum filled with various dendro- 
logical curiosities. The history of the garden dates back to the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, but most of the American and 
Asiatic species are of comparatively recent introduction. 
Adjacent to the forest garden are several hundred acres of forest 
under the direction of the school and in which the students find 
their practical demonstrations. The original working plans were 
made by Cotta in 1811, who laid out the compartment lines in rec- 
tangles, not a very convenient method for such a hilly range. More 
recently there has been a reestablishment of roads and lines which 
meander according to the topography so as to facilitate the separa- 
tion of the cove forests from the plateau forests and to facilitate 
forest transportation. The plateau forest of the school range con- 
sists almost entirely of spruce, the best stands of which are about 
I10 years old and contain some 105 cords to the acre. 
Among certain introduced species for forest planting they have 
tried Douglas fir mixed with spruce. A 25 year old stand of this 
sort shows considerable injury to the fir from heavy snow. 
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