EUROPEAN FOEESTEY 



MARCEL HOEHN, 



BERLIN. 



FORESTRY is a subject so compara- 

 tively new in Ontario, and yet of 

 so great importance to our people 

 that anything we can learn from those who 

 have had experience should be welcomed. 

 The following interesting article is con- 

 tributed by one of our correspondents, who 

 has had long experience in forestry in Ger- 

 many : 



The question is often asked, Why is it that 

 in Germany and France forestry has been 

 successfully practised by the government for 

 a century and a half, and we are only now 

 thinking of teaching coming generations 

 how best to conserve our forests ? By long 

 years of education and practical experiment, 

 forestry has become an art in those two 

 European countries. There, as a rule, they 

 look ahead. They reforest their wood- 

 land and do not deforest it. It is man- 

 aged as carefully as a gold dollar. Every- 

 thing is eked out and boiled down system- 

 atically before they enter the woods. The 

 forests are cropped when they are ripe as 

 regularly and methodically as a farm crop. 

 They have no open season methods, for one 

 crop is followed by another crop in regular 

 rotation. They have no denuded wood- 

 land, for one crop is immediately followed 

 by another, and the last is always better than 

 the one preceding. 



When the original forests are cropped in 

 order to start a new or young plantation, 

 every tree is removed. Nothing is spared 

 except a few nurse trefes, and each one has to 

 pass inspection, for it would be poor policy 

 to leave one which is partly diseased or 

 crooked. The ground is never in better 

 condition to grow young seedlings than just 



after the removal of the original forests. 

 Nature has provided the forest floor, with 

 millions of seeds of all kinds, and they are 

 only waiting for sunlight and air. Under a 

 thick shaded canopy they will not germinate 

 readily. Young forest seedlings under this 

 systematic treatment must come up together 

 properly and crowded thickly. They must 

 touch each other, and the more struggling 

 and fighting that goes on amongst the plants 

 the better. Otherwise there would be a fail- 

 ure, as the forest plants must pass through 

 a regular series of transformations all to- 

 gether in order that they should develop in 

 a uniform manner and produce regular 

 stems, and it is in this camp or school that 

 such transformation must take place before 

 the plants are thinned. There are only two 

 stages of growth in a young forest; the 

 nurses and the young seedling. 



Under this system it is surprising how 

 rapid the growth is. In five or six years 

 the young seedlings are ready to be thinned, 

 and in fifteen or twenty years you will have 

 a forest of which you may be proud, for it 

 will be a delight to look at. We cannot 

 view the art of forestry as practised in Ger- 

 many or France to-day without feeling the 

 deepest respect and admiration for it. It is 

 a credit to skill and long and patient experi- 

 ment, resulting in improved methods. As 

 all the trees are of one age, they are of the 

 same height and thickness, all straight, 

 smooth, sound, and without limbs on the 

 crunks. In a systematic forest there will 

 never be any over ripe trees, for as they are 

 all of one age they will all ripen together and 

 be cropped together. 



