24 Germany. 



very many independent principalities into which the 

 German territory had been divided, variable in 

 number from time to time, the 26 which had preserved 

 their autonomy formed in 1871 the federation of 

 States, known as the German Empire. Each of these 

 has its own representative government including the 

 forest administration, very much like the state 

 governments of the United States; only the army and 

 navy, tariff, posts, telegraphs, criminal law and 

 foreign policy, and a few other matters are under the 

 direct jurisdiction of the empire, represented in the 

 Reichstag, the Bundesrath, and the Emperor. 



The 208,830 square miles of territory,* which sup- 

 ports a population of about 60 million people, still 

 contain a forest area of a round 35 million acres (26% 

 of the land area) or .61 acre per capita, which although 

 largely under conservative management has long ago 

 ceased to supply by its annual increment (somewhat 

 over 50 cubic feet per acre) the needs of the popula- 

 tion; the imports during the last 50 years since 1862, 

 when Germany began to show excess of imports over 

 exports, having grown in volume at the average rate 

 of 10% to now round 380 million cubic feet (45 

 million dollars) or nearly 15% of the consumption. 



The larger part of Germany, two thirds of the 

 territory and population is controlled by modern 

 Prussia, with a total forest area of 20 million acres; 

 Bavaria comes next with one seventh of the land 

 area and 6 million acres of forest; the five larger states 

 of Wurttemberg, Baden, Saxony, Mecklenburg and 

 Hesse, occupying together another seventh of the 



* The statistics in this book do not pretend to be more than approximations. 



