FORESTRY IN FRANCE. 243 
ment of the communications. At the end of 1867 there were 2440 
miles of metalled and 5380 miles of unmetalled roads in the State 
forests, and since that year their length has been at least doubled. 
The great importance of accommodating the forest guards in 
suitable houses within the forests, is fully recognised ; and out of 
3200 guards, 1400 are lodged in 1213 houses, the remainder of 
them being granted allowances to lodge themselves in neighbouring 
villages. The proportion of roads and buildings in the communal 
forests is much less than in the State forests, partly because the 
communes have to pay for their construction, and funds are not 
always available, but partly also because the average size of these 
forests being smaller, roads and guards’ houses within them are not 
needed to the same extent. 
At the end of 1867 there were 126 saw-mills in the State forests, 
all worked by water-power. 
Timber-slides, sledge-roads, wire-rope tramways, and such-like 
means of exporting the wood are very little used in France. A 
great deal of timber is required for their construction and main- 
tenance, and considering the price that wood of all kinds can 
command, it is found better and cheaper, even in mountainous 
regions, to make permanent roads suitable for timber-carriages and 
carts. They are to be found only in a few localities where the con- 
ditions are exceptional. 
Portable iron tramways have not yet come into general use as a 
means of exporting timber from the forests, and it is believed that 
there is only one in use in France at the present time, viz., that at 
Baccarat at the base of the Vosges; but the advantages which the 
employment of this means of transport affords will doubtless shortly 
be better understood than at present, and a development of the 
system is to be anticipated—at any rate, in the forests of the plains. 
The floating of large timber is almost unknown ; but firewood for 
the supply of Paris is still floated from the hills of the Morvau 
down to the railways. 
FINANCIAL RESULTS OF WoRKING. 
The profit derivable from a forest is dependent on a number of 
causes, among which may be mentioned the species of which the 
crop is composed, the depth and nature of the soil, the climate, the 
system of culture, the proximity of great centres of consumption of 
produce, and the existence of good lines of export. 
Taking the average of the last three years for which the accounts 
