CONTINENTAL NOTES — FRANCE. 5 I 



places abroad, each country has its own special local conditions, 

 and requires independent study. 



5. I am tempted to digress here for a few lines. It is probable 

 that the advocates of " possibility " by volume hope to arrive at 

 accuracy in this matter through careful and long sustained 

 observations on the outturn of various forest crops. That we 

 should not remove annually more material than the forest can 

 put on in a year is, of course, a sound axiom, but will it really 

 be possible to ever discover this amount? I believe it to be 

 a counsel of perfection. It seems more than doubtful, for a 

 thousand different things affect it — altitude, aspect, climatic 

 conditions, the physical and chemical properties of the soil, 

 the method of treatment, the density of the stock throughout the 

 rotation, the mixture of species, storms, insect invasions and so 

 on, and most of these constantly vary from point to point and 

 from time to time. We can, with comparative ease, ascertain 

 the age to which we must grow our trees, the commercial or 

 other maturity, and I venture to think that "possibility" by 

 area, with a girth check corresponding to the age of maturity, 

 will meet the case sufficiently well, and even ensure truer 

 silvicultural treatment. It is enough, from the point of view 

 of the supply to the market, to provide an approximately even 

 yield, and this, I think, can be sufficiently well attained by a 

 careful allocation of the annual felling areas according to the 

 condition of the stock, by differentiation in the size of the 

 annual felling areas, and by having a fair number of working 

 sections, so that the lower annual outturns in some are likely 

 to be counterbalanced by the higher annual outturn in others. 

 Given the size below which we may not remove a tree unless 

 silvicultural considerations require it for the actual improvement 

 in growth of the stock, shall we not automatically arrive 

 eventually at the great aim of possibility by volume, namely, 

 the non-removal annually of more than the wood can put on ? 

 I believe also that a true normality in age-classes would 

 eventually be automatically attained, provided our silviculture 

 treatment were correct. 



6. There is an article by M. Henry, the Nancy professor, on 

 the rouge du sapin, an expression used in regard to the strangling 

 and withering off of side branches of the silver fir in the Jura. 

 Someone had made a great outcry that the whole of the silver 

 fir forests of the Jura, said to be the finest in the world, were 



