Government Supervision. 55 



civilization and denser population created greater 

 need for it. We find therefore that the restrictive 

 policy was much more developed in the Southern 

 and Western territories than in the Northern and 

 Eastern ones, where the development begins two 

 centuries later. 



The oldest attempts of controlling private forest 

 property are found in Bavaria (1516), Brunswick 

 (1590) and Wurttemberg (1614). Here, forest proper- 

 ties were placed either entirely under the supervision 

 of the princely forest administration, or, at least, 

 permission for intended fellings had to be secured. 

 Later, these restrictions were considerably reduced 

 in rigor (Bavaria, 1789). 



In Prussia, private forest property remained free 

 from government interference well into the 18th 

 century. An edict by the Great Elector, in 1670, 

 merely inveighs against the devastation of forests 

 by their owners, but refrains from any interference; 

 and the Forstordnung of 1720 also contains only the 

 general injunction to the owners not to treat their 

 forests uneconomically. But, in 1766, Frederick the 

 Great instituted a rigid supervision providing punish- 

 ment for fellings beyond a special budget determined 

 by experts. Soon after the French revolution, however, 

 unrestricted private ownership was re-established. 



Church and cloister property had always been 

 severely supervised, similar to the Mark and other 

 communal forest property, under the direction either 

 of specially appointed officials or the officials of the 

 princes. Finally, in some sections (Hesse-Kassel, 

 1711; Baden, 1787), the management of these com- 



