G TRANSACTIONS OF KOYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tlie growth of young trees, the ground was taken possession of by 

 beech and hornbeam. The oak forests will now gradually be re- 

 stored ; but very few of them, except in Slavonia, can be worked 

 for a long series of years. It was formerly the practice to permit 

 grazing during the fellings and the years immediately succeeding 

 them, and numbers of cattle were bred who passed their whole lives 

 in the forests ; it must therefore be considered a fortunate circum- 

 stance, that, after the valuable trees were felled, a crop of shrubs 

 was able to spring up here and there and afford some shelter to the 

 ground. At the same time, valuable beech and pine forests, ex- 

 tending over thousands of acres, were cut or burnt down, with the 

 deliberate object of turning them into pastures, which were then 

 considered to have more value than forests yielding no revenue. 



Subsequently to the year 1850, an inconceivable amount of harm 

 was done, the forests near the principal lines of export, or situated 

 in the vicinity of towns and manufactories, having been worked far 

 too heavily. At this time also forests of large extent were con- 

 ceded to communes, who, not sufficiently understanding their value, 

 destroyed them ; and the timber and even the soil of many forests, 

 the property of joint owners, was sold by the co-proprietors, who 

 ignorantly preferred the small sum of money they could then realise 

 on them to the permanent revenue they might ultimately have 

 yielded under the more favourable conditions of the future. Con- 

 siderable areas also were cleared for cultivation, but the result was 

 in many cases disastrous ; as, for instance, along the banks of the 

 Danube, the Tisza, and the Temes, where formerly fine oak forests 

 grew, but the ground is now occupied by marshes. A recent case 

 of this kind occurred near Arad, on the Maros, where, the forest 

 growth having been cleared away, the soil rapidly deteriorated, and 

 is now fitted neither for agriculture nor for forest. 



Owing to the above causes, the condition of the forests, especially 

 those which belong to communes and private proprietors, is at the 

 present time very poor — excessive felling, imperfect regeneration, 

 and uncontrolled pasturing having led in many localities to the 

 most melancholy results ; as witness the shrub forests on the higher 

 mountains, the moving sands of the Alfold or great plain lying 

 between the Danube and the Tisza, and the stony avalanches of 

 the Karst between Trieste and Fiume, where the soil, when pro- 

 tected by forests, was extraordinarily fertile, but now the limestone 

 rocks have been completely denuded ; and if the country is to 

 be allowed, even gradually, to recover itself, the exclusion of cattle, 



