POKE ST -TRAMWAYS . 345 



by railway engineers. Thus the 12 kilometers (7J miles) 

 of railroad in the Ebersberg forest were constructed very 

 rapidly by the 1st Pioneer battalion from the Munich 

 Garrison. [Forest-tramways are used in Assam, the Punjab, 

 and other parts of India.* Tr.] 



4. Statistics. 



The nineteenth century was characterised chiefly by great 

 improvements in machinery and a consequent complete revolu- 

 tion in the means of transport and communications. Forestry 

 should therefore march with the times, and improve the means 

 of transport in forests which are difficult of access. It is a 

 great mark of progress during the last 20 or 30 years, in such a 

 conservative industry as forestry, that a considerable extension 

 of forest-tramway has taken place. 



Dozens of forest-tramways have been constructed in Ger- 

 many during the last ten years, and there is scarcely a German 

 province in which either a permanent or temporary tramway 

 is not being worked. The first steps in this direction were 

 taken in North Germany, in the different Prussian and Saxon 

 provinces, and South Germany has followed suit, partly owing 

 to the enormous volumes of timber following the great destruc- 

 tion of forests by insects, or storms, in South Bavaria, the 

 Vnsges Mountains and "\Viirtemberg. The oldest forest-tram- 

 way is that of the Sihlwald, near Zurich (Fig. 230). 



The most important forest-tramway hitherto made on level 

 land in Germany was constructed in 1889 92 to remove the 

 enormous volume of timber (4 million cubic meters, or 2f 

 million loads) which had been killed by the " Nun " moth 

 caterpillars, in the forests of Ebersberg, Perlach, Sauerlach 

 and Forstenried. This tramway consisted of 12 kilometers 

 (7 miles) of main line of the ordinary gauge, from the rail- 

 way-station of Kirchseeon, passing through the middle of the 

 devastated forests, with 40 kilometers (25 miles) of branch- 

 lines, a gauge of 60 centimeters (say 2 feet), and 27 kilometers 

 (17 miles) of portable lines which passed right up to the 



* Indian Forester.'' Vol. XFI., p. HI'.) gives an account of the Changamanga 

 tramway in the Punjab. 



