FORESTKY IN HUNGARY. 



Management and Working. 



Previously to 1848, when the feudal system still prevailed in the 

 country, the Hungarian forests were, generally speaking, valued 

 almost solely on account of the game which they harboured. They 

 were very little worked, and their revenue was merely that obtained 

 from grazing, from the collection of acorns, and from the sale of 

 firewood : timber was used exclusively for local purposes. A few 

 forests only, situated either near rivers, such as the Danube, Tisza, 

 Garane, Vag, and Arva, or around mines and smelting furnaces, or 

 in the neighbourhood of large towns, produced any considerable 

 income to their owners. After the year 1850, when the feudal 

 system had ceased to exist, the situation was extremely unfavour- 

 able to proprietors of land, who, a few years later, when, in conse- 

 quence of the extension of railways, new markets were opened, 

 tried, without thought of the future, to realise as much as they 

 could from their forests, the importance of maintaining which they 

 failed to understand. They did not, in most cases, possess the 

 capital required to work them on their own account, and they 

 therefore farmed them out, on from five to ten years' leases, to 

 merchants and contractors, whose sole aim was to get the timber 

 out at a cheap rate. The proprietors were unacquainted with the 

 prices paid for wood in the market ; they would not incur the ex- 

 pense of having their forests properly valued ; and were ignorantly 

 satisfied if they received considerable sums for forests of large 

 extent, even though the rates paid to them were ruinously low. 

 The first merchant who came carried off the finest timber, those 

 who followed him taking, each in succession, his choice among the 

 best of the trees which remained, and offering still smaller prices. 



In this manner the wood was cleared out of the more accessible 

 forests by slides, canals, and streams, and they rapidly became 

 denuded ; while the large quantity of waste-wood, resulting from a 

 too prodigal felling for large timber, brought about a depreciation 

 in the price obtainable for firewood in other forests. In consequence 

 of this, and of the general absence of communications in the country, 

 which caused the timber over the greater part of it to have little or 

 no value, a large proportion of the best oak forests were ruined by 

 continued grazing, and were reduced to the condition of forest 

 pastures and acorn grounds ; indeed, in many instances there was 

 little left in them but old stumps ; and where the cattle permitted 



