314 FOEESTS OF GERMANY. 



mildness of her climate makes small demands on the woods for 

 fuel. Besides these circumstances, it must be remembered that 

 the sciences of observation did not become knowledges of prac- 

 tical apphcation till after the mischief was aheady mainly done, 

 and even forgotten, in Alpine Italy ; while its evils were just be- 

 ginning to be sensibly felt in France when the claims of natural 

 philosophy as a hberal study were first acknowledged in modem 

 Europe. The former political condition of the Itahan Peninsula 

 would have effectually prevented the adoption of a general sys- 

 tem of forest economy, however clearly the importance of a wise 

 administration of this great public interest might have been un- 

 derstood. The woods which controlled and regulated the fl.ow of 

 the river-sources were very often in one jurisdiction ; the plains 

 to be irrigated, or to be inundated by floods and desolated by tor- 

 rents, in another. Concert of action on such a subject, between 

 a multitude of jealous petty sovereignties, was obviously impos- 

 sible, and nothing but the permanent union of all the Italian 

 States under a single government, can render practicable the es- 

 tabhshment of such arrangements for the conservation and restora- 

 tion of the forests, and for the regulation of the flow of the waters, 

 as are necessary for the fuU development of the yet unexhausted 

 resources of that fairest of lands, and even for the maintenance 

 of the present condition of its physical geography. 



The Forests of Germcmy. 



Germany, including a considerable part of the Austrian Em- 

 pire, from character of surface and chmate, and from the at- 

 tention which has long been paid in aU the German States to 

 sylviculture, is in a far better condition in this respect than its 

 more southern neighbors ; and though in the Alpine provinces 

 of Bavaria and Austria the same improvidence which marks the 

 niral economy of the corresponding districts of Switzerland, 



does the modem naval architecture of most commercial countries, though appar- 

 ently witnoul a proportional increase of strength. The old modes of ship- 

 building have been, to a considerable extent, handed down to very recent 

 times in the Mediterranean, and though better models and modes of construc- 

 tion are now employed in Italian shipyards, an American or an Englishman 

 loots with astonishment at the huge beams and thick planks so often em- 

 ployed in the construction of very small vessels navigating that sea, and not 

 yet old enough to be broken up as unseaworthy. 



