444 DISPOSAL AND SALE OF WOOD. 



(b) Wood required for Mines, Smelting Furnaces, etc. 

 Where works of this nature are very extensive and require 

 annually for their maintenance the yield of entire forests, it 

 was formerly the custom to assign the management of a 

 sufficient area of forests to the administration of the works, 

 in order that the forests might be managed purely in their 

 interests- (such forests are termed in German, Saalforst, 

 Montanforst, or Reservatforsf) . Experience has, however, 

 shown that such an allotment of entire forests to mines, etc., 

 has not resulted in any benefit to the forests ; on the contrary, 

 in some cases, they have been thus destroyed. Forests have 

 therefore, recently, as in Bavaria, been withdrawn from the 

 administration of the mines; the necessary wood is now 

 furnished to them by the Forest Department.* 



(c) Wood required by the Department of Public Works. 

 -The requirements of the Public Works Department for 



rectifying river-banks, for railways and less frequently for 

 public buildings, gave rise to similar assignments of forests 

 (such as coppice for growing fascines) to that department, with 

 this object in view. Experience has shown that it is disad- 

 vantageous to the State to deliver timber for building purposes 

 to the public works officials from the State forests, the 

 procedure being uneconomical and inimical to the State 

 budget. Even forest buildings do not form an exception to 

 this rule. 



[As the French Navy has still the right of preemption of 

 wood, chiefly oak, in the French State forests, a short account 

 of the procedure in such cases will be useful. Eoyal ordi- 

 nances dating from A.D. 1318 allowed the French Navy the 

 right of preemption of wood in all the forests of France, 

 whether private or otherwise, agents being sent by the naval 

 authorities to mark trees in the felling-areas. This right 

 continued up to 1838, when it was abandoned (with, how- 

 ever, the power of resuming it if necessary) in favour of 

 purchasing the required wood in the open market. After the 

 latter procedure had been in force for 20 years, the right of 

 marking suitable trees in the State forests was resumed by the 



* [A similar case is the Kunmon Iron Mining Company's Forest Grant, in the 

 N. W. Provinces of India, which has been resumed by the State. Tr.] 



