FORESTRY IN FRANCE. ya i 
form part of the domain of the State, all those which, being the 
property of Communes or Sections, or of Public Institutions, are 
susceptible of being worked under a regular system, and finally all 
those in which the State, the Communes, or Public Institutions 
possess a proprietary right jointly with private persons, are 
administered directly by the State Forest Department in accord- 
ance with the provisions of the forest law. 
The areas thus administered at the commencement of 1885 were 
as follows, viz. :— 
Hectares. Sq. Miles. 
State Forests, . : ‘ : ~ 150125688) =) 3,910 
Communes, Sections, and Public Institutions, 1,967,846 = 7,598 
Total, : . 2,980,534 = 11,508 
These figures, which include the dunes, represent about 54 per 
cent. of the entire area of France, and nearly one-third of the 
total wooded area. An additional 144 square miles of barren 
land had, up to the end of 1884, been purchased by the State 
in connection with the project for the consolidation of bare and 
unstable slopes on the great mountain ranges; and this area is 
also administered by the Department under the forest law. About 
40 per cent. of the State forests are situated in the plains, while 
the rest of them, together with nearly the whole of the communal 
forests, are found in about equal proportions on low hills, up to an 
altitude of 1700 feet, and on the higher mountain ranges. About 
one-half of them stand on limestone rock, 92 per cent. of their 
entire area being actually under wood. 
The principal object of the following pages is to sketch in a 
brief and summary manner the system of management adopted for 
these forests, so that some general idea may be foryied of what the 
business of the French Forest Department consists in, and what 
the results of their labours have been, up %v the latest date to 
which information is available under each head. The organisation 
of the professional staff of the department, and the manner in 
which it is recruited, will then be explained. 
State Forests. 
The forests now belonging to the State owe their origin to one or 
other of the following sources. They either formed part of the 
ancient royal domain, as it was constituted at the time of the 
ordinance of 1669, or of the sovereign domains united to France 
