306 FOKESTS OF FEAlSrCE. 



wood is rapidly increasing in tliat empire, and a large part of ita 

 territory is mountainous, sterile, and otherwise such in character 

 or situation, that it can be more profitably devoted to the growth 

 of wood than to any agricultural use. Hence it is evident that 

 the proportion of forest in 1Y50, taking even IMirabeau's large 

 estimate, was not very much too great for permanent mainte- 

 nance, though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that it 

 would have been sound policy to fell the woods and clear land in 

 some provinces, while large forests should have been planted in 

 others.* During the period in question France neither exported 

 manufactured wood or rough timber, nor derived important col- 

 lateral advantages of any sort from the destruction of her forests. 

 She is consequently impoverished and crippled to the extent of 

 the diiierence between what she actually possesses of wooded sur- 

 face and what she ought to have retained.f 



The force of the various considerations which have been sug- 

 gested in regard to the importance of the forest has been gener- 



* The view I have taken of this point is confirmed by the careful investiga- 

 tions of Rentzsch, who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire 

 surface at twenty-three per cent, for the interior of Germany, and supposes 

 that near the coast, where the air is suppUed with humidity by evaporation 

 from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See Rentzsch's 

 very valuable prize essay, Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volks- 

 wirthscJiaft, cap. viii. 



The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the Ger- 

 man States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any growth 

 but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her mountains 

 expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and because at least 

 her southern provinces are more frequently visited both by extreme droughts 

 and by deluging rains. 



f In 1863, France imported lumber to the value of twenty-five and a half 

 millions of dollars, and exported to the amount of six and a half millions of 

 dollars. The annual consumption of France was estimated in 1866 at 212,- 

 000,000 cubic feet for building and manufactuiing, and 1,588,500,000 for fire- 

 wood and charcoal. The annual product of the forest-soil of France does not 

 exceed 70,000,000 cubic feet of wood fit for industrial use, and 1,300,000,000 

 cubic feet consumed as fuel. This estimate does not include the product of 

 scattered trees on private grounds, but the consumption is estimated to exceed 

 the production of the forests by the amount of about twenty millions of dol- 

 lars. It is worth noticing that the timber for building and manufacturing 

 produced in France comes almost wholly from the forests of the State or of 

 the communes. — Jules Clave, in Revue des Deux Mbndes for March 1, 1866, 

 p. 207. 



