GERMAN FOREST MANAGEMENT SAXONY. 



227 



The total area of the State is 3,700,000 acres, and its population 3,182,000, and its total Ion-si 

 an-a about 1,020,000 acres, or 27 per cent. Of this forest area, 173,889 hectares, or nearly 130,000 

 acres, equal to about 43 per cent of all forests of the country, belong to the State. The accurate, 

 records for these State forests have been kept for more than eighty years, and fully illustrate the, 

 development and growth of forestry in the Kingdom. The bulk of the forests are mountain forest; 

 91 per cent in conifers, mostly spruce, and only 9 per cent in hard woods, most of which is beech; 

 while only about 1 per cent is nonproductive rock and water area. 



As early as 1704 the State of Saxony began the improvement of the then rather dilapidated 

 forest properties. The real systematic work of forest survey and management, however, did uot 

 begin until Heinrich Gotta (often called the father of modern forestry) began his noteworthy 

 efforts in 1811. Though the Government never appropriated special funds for the increase of its 

 forest holdings, the money which accrued from the sales of other State lands, as well as roadways, 

 building sites, etc., sufficed to increase the area during the past eighty years by fully 10 per cent, 

 the growth being a slow, steady one, fully illustrating the policy of the Government. 



Thus the growth was: 1830 to 184(i, f,UOO acres; 1840 to 1853, 5,000 acres; 1853 to 1803, 5,000 

 acres; 1865 to 1873, 17,200 acres; 1873 to 1883, 17,200 acres; 1883 to 1893, 12,500 acres. 



As in all German States, nearly every piece of State forest was burdened by rights of private 

 persons and corporations, for which Saxony has paid, almost entirely in cash, the handsome price 

 of $]. 300,000. 



During the last sixty years the area stocked with conifers has steadily grown from about 

 310,000 to over 385,000 acres, and the area of beech and other hard woods except oak has been 

 proportionately diminished, the hard woods all told covering at present only about 14,000 acres, or 

 a little over 3 per cent of the forest area. The condition of the forests, though, of course, very 

 good at the start, if compared to ordinary wild woods, has steadily improved since 1817, in spite 

 of the fact that each decade a larger amount of wood was cut. 



The following figures serve to illustrate this important fact and at the same time show that 

 there has not only been a steady increase in the total amount of wood standing and the amount 

 cut, but that the larger sizes form to-day a much greater per cent than formerly: 



From these figures it appears that the cut on the whole has increased from 21,000,000 cubic 

 feet to 37,000,000, or by fully 57 per cent, and the cut per acre aud year of total forest area from (iO 

 cubic feet to 90 cubic feet, or exactly 50 per cent. Moreover, of the 90 cubic feet per acre in 1893 

 there were 08 cubic feet, or 75 per cent, wood over3 inches (excluding stump wood), while from 1817 

 to 1820 only (5(5 per cent was over 3-inch stuff. But what indicates even more strongly the effect 

 of better management is the fact that more than half of the cut of 1893 was sold, not as cord wood, 

 but as timber (saw timber, etc.), while even as late as 1805 only a fourth could thus be utilized, 

 though the manner of selection (inspection) has changed but little since that time. That with all 

 this intense utilization of the forest the standing timber should increase instead of becoming 

 exhausted is perhaps the strongest example of the success of scientific forestry and one which in 

 this country would scarcely be believed possible by most of the lumbermen and woodsmen. 



Practically, all State forests are timber forests and the prevalent method of treatment has for 

 a long time been the " kahlschlag" method of cutting, where all trees are cut at the harvest and 

 the bare area is at once planted with nursery stock. The expenses for cultural work all told. 



