Forestry Literature. 85 



accumulation of empiric knowledge. Of a forestry 

 science one could hardly speak until an attempt had 

 been made to organize the knowledge thus empirically 

 acquired into a systematic presentation, and this was 

 not done until the middle or last half of the 18th 

 century. 



The first attempts at a literary presentation of the 

 empiric knowledge are found in the encyclopaedic 

 volumes of the so-called "Hausvater" (household 

 fathers domestic economists), who treated in a most 

 diffuse manner of agriculture in all its aspects, includ- 

 ing silviculture. 



A number of these tomes appeared during the 17th 

 century; the best and most influential being published 

 at the very beginning of that century (1595-1609), 

 written by a preacher from Silesia, Johann Colerus, 

 and entitled Oeconomia ruralis et domestica, worin das 

 ampt alter braven Hausvater und Hausmutter begriffen. 



Colerus relied upon home experience and not, as 

 Petrus de Crescentiis in his earlier work, Praedium 

 rusticum (translated from the French, in 1592), had 

 done, upon the scholastic expositions of the Italians. 

 He was rewarded by the popularity of his work which 

 went through thirteen editions and became very 

 widely known. 



Somewhat earlier, a jurist, Noe Meurer, wrote a 

 book on forest law and hunting (second edition, 1576), 

 which on this field remained long an authority, and 

 gives insight into the condition of forest use at the 

 time. 



But the first independent work on forestry, divorced 

 from the hunt and farming, did not appear until 1713, 



