Restriction in Forest Use. 49 



Yet a growing population increased the need for 

 farm land, and since intensive use of the existing 

 farm area was not attempted until the end of the 

 18th century, the forest had to yield still further. 



3. Methods of Restriction in Forest Use. 



All ordinances issued by the princes to regulate the 

 management of their properties contain the prescrip- 

 tion, that permission of the Landesherr is necessary for 

 clearings, and that abandoned fields growing up to 

 wood are to be kept as woodland; this partly for 

 timber needs, partly for considerations of the chase. 

 Still, Frederick the Great in colonizing East Prussia, 

 expressed himself to the effect that he cared more for 

 men than for wood, and enjoined his officials to colon- 

 ize especially the woods far from water, which entailed 

 even more waste of wood than where means of trans- 

 portation allowed at least partial marketing. 



Improvident clearings proceeded even under his 

 reign on the Frische Nehrung between Danzig and 

 Pillau, and started the shifting sands of that peninsula. 



In the absence of all knowledge as regards the ex- 

 tent of existing supplies or of the increment, and with 

 poor means of transportation, at least local distress 

 was imminent. 



To stave off a threatening timber scarcity, regula- 

 tion in the use of wood was attempted by the forest 

 ordinances, even to the extent of forbidding the 

 hanging out of green brush to designate a drinking 

 hall, or the cutting of May trees, similar to our 

 crusade in the United States against the use of Christ- 

 mas trees. A diameter limit to which trees might be 



