CONTINENTAL NOTES FRANCE. 73 



14. Continental Notes — France. 



By A. G. Hobart-Hampden. 



For those who desire to know how Forestry is progressing in 

 France, a perusal of the Revue des Eaux et Forets is to be 

 recommended. There is a constantly increasing number of 

 forest societies in France, like the Society of "Franche Comt^ 

 et Belfort" and the "Touring Club," each no doubt with their 

 own Magazine, or at least Transactions, but the Revue is the 

 service magazine /«r excellence of the French Forest Department, 

 and its contributors are the most likely to be " at the front of the 

 march of ideas," in the expressive French phrase, besides, 

 probably, being more likely to have access to the official forest 

 publications than the private forest owners and others who chiefly 

 make up the other societies. In Germany, we believe, every 

 national schoolboy learns something about forests, and now 

 the French Minister of Public Instruction appears to be taking up 

 the subject. It is a most encouraging sign that the French 

 generally (apart from the State, which is, of course, a large forest 

 proprietor) should be thus awaking to the importance of Forestry 

 in France, as we are doing at home. There is plenty of scope, for 

 M. Paul Descombes states that France has over 15^ million acres 

 of uncultivated land, on which, as a rule, forestry would pay better 

 than anything else. Like us, the French encounter difficulties, 

 but often of a somewhat different kind. One of their aims is 

 to get communes to afforest their waste lands, and there they 

 meet with the apathy of the peasant population and also the 

 active hostility of the grazing interest, whereas we are mostly 

 concerned with private property ; and whatever the obstacles to 

 the afforestation of private property, at least the owner is not, 

 as a rule, hampered with the necessity of providing for the rights 

 of other persons. Not but that it would, of course, be eminently 

 satisfactory if the English Government were to become, as in 

 other countries, a large forest owner. In the case of the present 

 Crown forests, no doubt there often is, as in France and India 

 and elsewhere, the irritating drawback of having to deal with 

 rightholders, but in any additions that were made to the Govern- 

 ment forests there would be as perfect freedom of action as in the 

 case of private owners. All Continental nations, and some of 

 our dependencies, make a good thing of their forests, — India 



