FORESTS OF GERMANY. 315 



Italy and France, has produced effects hardly less disastrous,* 

 yet, as a whole, the German States, as Siemoni well observes, 

 must be considered as in this respect the model countries of 

 Europe. Not only is the forest area in general maintained with- 

 out diminution, but new woods are planted where they are spe- 

 cially needed,f and, though the slow growth of forest-trees in 

 those climates reduces the direct pecuniary returns of woodlands 



* As an instance of the scarcity of fuel in some parts of the territory of 

 Bavaria, where, not long since, wood abounded, I may mention the fact that 

 the water of salt-springs is, in some instances, conveyed to the distance of 

 sixty miles, in iron pipes, to reach a supply of fuel for boiling it down. 



In France, the juice of the sugar-beet is sometimes carried three or four 

 miles in pipes for the same reason. 



Many of my readers may remember that it was not long ago proposed to 

 manufacture the gas, for the supply of London, at the mouths of the coal- 

 mines, and convey it to the city in pipes, thus saving the transportation of the 

 coal ; but as the coke and mineral tar would still have remained to be disposed 

 of, the operation would probably not have proved advantageous. 



Great economy in the production of petroleum has resulted from the appli- 

 cation of cast-iron tubes to the wells, the oil being conveyed in this way over 

 the various inequalities of surface for three or four miles to the tanks on the 

 railroads, and forced into them by steam-engines. The price of transport is 

 thus reduced one-fifth. But now, within less than twenty years after the first 

 use of tubes for this short distance, we are told of the existence of many hun- 

 dreds of miles of these iron arteries, which, starting from the general reser- 

 voirs into whi ,h the oil is gathered from the different wells by the shorter 

 tubes, convey this valuable fluid through hill and valley, mountain and river, 

 and finally deposit it in receiving tanks at the sea-coast, from whence it is 

 drawn out for domestic use or barreled for exportation. In the construction 

 and laying of these conduits, which are fed by the wide oil districts of Ohio, 

 Pennsylvania and New York, no doubt every advantage has been taken of all 

 the known principles of hydrostatics, but it is impossible to suppose that it has 

 not been necessary to employ steam-power, to a very considerable extent, in 

 order to force the currents onward, and this is understood to be the fact. 



f The Austrian Government is making energetic efforts for the propagation 

 of forests in Tyrol and on the desolate waste of the Karst. The difiiculties 

 from drought and from the violence of the winds, which might prove fatal to 

 young and even to somewhat advanced plantations, are very serious, but in 

 1866 upwards of 400,000 trees had been planted on the Karst and great quan- 

 tities of seeds sown. Thus far, the results of this important experiment are 

 said to be encouraging. See the Chronique Forestiere in the Revue des Eaux 

 etForits, Feb., 1870. 



Later accounts state that the Government nurseries of the Karst supplied 

 between 1869-1873, 26,000,000 young forest-trees for planting, and that of 

 70,000 ash trees planted in the Karst, scarcely one failed to grow. 



