IMPRESSIONS OF FORESTRY IN THE SCHWARZWALD. 1 67 



gradually to have been bought out, and now in some States 

 pasturage in the forest is prohibited by law. 



In order to bring the soil back into fertile condition, the 

 German forester, recognising that the openness of the canopy 

 was the cause of the deterioration, set about remedying matters 

 by once more introducing close order, and with a view to 

 hastening this, the thinnings were restricted to the removal of 

 suppressed trees. At anyrate, theoretically, this was the system 

 adopted. Now if there had been no disease, no windfall, no 

 insect attacks, no accidents of any sort to the standing trees 

 composing the forest, probably this system would have had very 

 highly satisfactory results. But unfortunately there was and is 

 windfall, cankerous diseases are by no means rare, in particular 

 that caused by yEcidium elatinum. The mistletoe also is common, 

 and produces bad defects in the timber. The method of 

 thinning out then took no account of dominant trees which 

 might be affected by cankerous growths or which might have 

 other defects. These would in course of time get broken off by 

 the wind, and large gaps would be caused in the canopy. This 

 system then, carried to extremes, had to a certain extent the 

 effect of defeating the very objects for which it was chiefly 

 intended, namely, the preservation of good soil conditions and 

 the natural regeneration of the forest. Further, the omission to 

 cut defective trees, such as those with wide spreading branchy 

 crowns, if they happened to be in the dominant class, had often 

 the effect of prejudicing the growth of probably several sur- 

 rounding smaller but much finer stems. 



Now, however, the younger German foresters are practically 

 unanimous in upholding the more modern system, which, by the 

 way, does not seem to have originated in Germany, but rather in 

 Denmark or France. Now it is being adopted in some parts of 

 Germany in a more thoroughly scientific manner perhaps than 

 either in Denmark or in France. It has been given various 

 names. It might be called the " Danish " or the " French " 

 system or the "free thinning" system. It should not be con- 

 founded, however, with the very free system which had, until 

 recently, come to be considered the correct one in Great Britain 

 during, at least, the latter half of last century. 



Thinning should properly only begin when the larger part of 

 the height-growth has taken place ; whereas under our arbori- 

 cultural method even the thicket stage was never permitted to 



