240 FORESTRY INVESTIGATIONS U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



The present Oberlaudforstmeister, or director, of the Prussian forest department uses the 

 following language in laying down the principles upon which the Government manages its forests : 



The Prussian State forest administration does not accede to the principles of a continuous highest soil rent 

 based upon compound interest calculations, but believes, in contradistinction to private forest management, that it 

 can not avoid the obligation in the management of the State forests of keeping in view the welfare of the whole 

 community of citizens, and therein taking into consideration the need for continued supply of wood and other forest 

 products as well as the other objects to which in so many directions the forest is subservient. The administration 

 does not consider itself entitled to pursue a one-sided financial policy, least of all to submit the Government forests 

 to a pure money-making management strictly based on capital and interest calculations, but considers it its duty to 

 so manage the forests as a patrimony belonging to the whole nation that the present generation may lie benefited by 

 the highest possible usufruct in satisfying its wants and deriving the protection which the forest renders, and that 

 to future generations may be secured at least as large usufruct of the same kind. 



To carry out these principles the intimate knowledge of the conditions of the property, 

 referred to above, is necessary and is obtained by a careful forest survey as a basis for a systematic 

 administration and forest regulation. 



These data of this forest survey are not only recorded in writing but such as can be readily 

 noted are finally placed upon the blaiik maps described above, together with the results of the 

 forest regulation described further on, so that the manager can readily overlook the details of his 

 district and the propositions for its management. 1 This information after further subdivision of 

 the compartments where needed on account of differences in soil conditions or growth is given by 

 means of different colors, difference in shade, numbers, figures, marks, and signs. These maps, 

 which are prepared after a most painstaking forest survey, and which we may call u manager's 

 map" (Plate XXXII), show at a glance not only the nature of soil conditions and what the prin- 

 cipal kind of timber and its admixtures are in each compartment or subdivision, but also how old 

 the growth ; whether it is to be treated as a coppice, standard coppice, or timber forest; at what 

 period in the rotation it is to be cut, and such notes as the manager himself may add from year 

 to year, as, for instance, the yearly fellings, plantings, movable nurseries, new road projects, etc. 



One of the most instructive exhibits in this direction was that showing the changes in Timlitz 

 forest, Saxony. The map of the district in 1822 presented about the condition of one of our 

 mismanaged Michigan forests of pine and hard woods mixed, from which all the good timber had 

 been culled, leaving it to inferior kinds with few groups of straggling pines and more valuable 

 hard woods, without symmetry or system in the distribution of kinds or age classes. At the same 

 time a map was constructed showing ideally how the forest was to look after eighty years' well- 

 planned management. We can then follow in the maps made every ten or twenty years the 

 changes in appearance under the hand of the forester. During the management new information 

 and experience have dictated modifications of the original working plan, giving rise to a new 

 manager's map, the approach to which appearing in the timber map for 1885 leaves no doubt that 

 at the end of the period of regulation we will have a well-grown pine forest, with deciduous trees 

 mixed in or confined to the more suitable situations, so disposed over the area that annually or 

 periodically the same amount, or nearly so, of valuable material can be harvested. 



The painstaking methods of surveying, describing, measuring, calculating, planning, book- 

 keeping, and repeated revising of all the work from decade to decade were shown in the regulation 

 work of the district of Hiuternah, Prussia, contained in six large folio volumes of manuscript, 

 continued from the year 1822 to the last revision in 1890. We can only briefly indicate what this 

 work involves, which was briefly summarized in the following exhibit: 



FOREST REGULATION. 



PROGRESS OF WORK REQUIRED TO HRING FOREST AREAS UNDER RATIONAL FOIiEST MANAGEMENT. 



I. (leodetic and topographic surrey and mapping. 



II. Forest survey in connection with I, noting all areas distinguished by quality of soil, composition, and age of 

 timber; general description of forest conditions, of climatic conditions, of surrounding conditions, of 

 possible dangers, of market conditions, means of transportation, etc. 



'Each State government pursues somewhat different methods of mapping. Sometimes two sets of maps are 

 made, one to show the conditions, which might then be called a timber map, the other to show the working plan; 

 but these are now mostlv combined into one. 



