656 UTILIZATION OF BARK AND ITS CONSTITUENTS. 



7. Present Condition of Revenue from Bark-Coppice. 



During the last ten years complaints about the depressed 

 condition of bark-coppices in Germany have increased. The 

 monopoly of the market, which, according to Jentsch, it 

 claimed formerly, has gone ; the tanners now dictate the price 

 of bark. This revolution is due to the combined action of 

 many unfavourable causes, of which the following are the 

 most important : An enormous increase in the leather 

 industry, now amounting to about ten million hundredweights 

 of hides, requires far more tan than Germany can produce. 

 Hence there has been a great import of tanning products, viz., 

 oak-bark from France, Austro-Hungary, Belgium and Holland, 

 as well as of tanning materials from other countries. As a 

 result the price of oak-bark has gone down, so that practically 

 the revenue of badly situated or badly managed bark-coppices 

 has disappeared. The imported materials are either better 

 or cheaper, or they are extracts that allowed tanners to give 

 up tan-pits, and shorten considerably the period required 

 for tanning leather. Besides this, several kinds of chemicals 

 have rendered tannin no longer essential for leather-manu- 

 facture. The cost of working the bark-coppices has steadily 

 increased. 



Jentsch* states that at a price of 4s. 6d. per cwt., with 

 15 years' rotation, interest being reckoned at 3^ per cent., 

 the annual revenue of an acre of bark-coppices varies from 

 10s. 5d. for first quality, to Is. 4d. for fourth quality, while at 

 a price of 3s. 6d. per cwt., they are 7s. 2d., to zero. 



Taking one agricultural crop off the land after cutting the 

 coppice does not improve the revenue, taking two crops yields 

 from 5d. to 2s. per acre ; but on the other hand those crops 

 deteriorate the soil, and it is uncertain whether the loosening 

 of the soil and the consequent improvement of the shoots 

 compensate for this, or not. Jentsch asserts that on a good 

 soil and by good management (Mayr adds, with a suitable 

 climate) oak-coppice is still a paying concern, and that bad 

 returns are due to bad management. [In 850 acres of oak- 

 coppice, near Tavistock, where climate and soil are suitable 



* Jentsch, " Der Deutsche Eichenschalvvuld u. seinr /ukunl't. I'.crlin, 1S<M). 



