Volume Allotment. 113 



5. Methods of Forest Organization. 



As stated before, to Hartig and Cotta belongs the 

 credit of having applied systematically on a large 

 scale methods of forest organization for sustained 

 yield; Hartig having been active in Prussia since 1811, 

 and Cotta beginning to organize the Saxon forests in 

 the same year. The method employed by Hartig, 

 the so-called volume allotment, had been already 

 formulated and its foundation laid by Kregting and 

 others (although Hartig seems to have claimed the 

 invention). But it was reserved to Hartig to build 

 up this method in its detail, and to formulate clearly 

 and precisely its application, as well as to improve 

 the practice of forest survey, calculation of increment, 

 and the making of yield tables. His method involved 

 a survey, a subdivision, a construction of yield tables 

 and the formulation of working plans, in which the 

 principle according to which the forest was to be 

 managed during the whole rotation was laid down 

 for each district. The rotation was determined, di- 

 vided into periods, finally of twenty years, and the 

 periodic volume yield represented by all stands was 

 distributed through all the periods of the rotation 

 in such a manner as to make the periodic felling bud- 

 gets approximately equal; or, since the tendency to' 

 increased wood consumption was recognized, an in- 

 crease of the felling budget toward the end of the 

 rotation was considered desirable. 



Cotta based his system of forest organization upon 

 a method described by a Bavarian, Schilcher (1796) ; 

 it relied primarily upon area rather than volume 



