118 Germany. 



While these men pleaded for a strict finance calcu- 

 lation, such as is properly applied to any business 

 making financial results the main issue, the defenders 

 of the old regime, which sought the object of forest 

 management mainly in highest material or value 

 production, advanced as their financial program the 

 attainment of the highest forest rent as opposed to 

 the highest soil rent. They neglected and derided 

 the complicated interest calculations which have to 

 take into consideratoin uncertain future developments, 

 and were satisfied with producing a satisfactory 

 balance, a surplus of income over expenses, no matter 

 what interest rate on the capital involved in soil and 

 forest growth that might represent. 



At the present time these financial propositions 

 are still mainly under heated discussion. 



In actual practice, the various state forest adminis- 

 trations, with the exception of the Saxon one, con- 

 tinue to rely upon the older methods in regulating the 

 management of their forest properties without refer- 

 ence to financial theories. This is largely due to 

 momentum of the practical existence and application 

 of these methods in earlier times and the difficulty 

 and impracticability of a change. Just now, however, 

 several of the State administrations are preparing to 

 radically revise their working plans. 



In Prussia, the instructions for working plans 

 of 1819 formulated by Hartig were improved upon 

 by his successor, Oberlandforstmeister von Reuss 

 (1836), and these instructions formed the basis of the 

 work of forest regulation until the end of the 19th 

 century. It is a periodic area allotment with only a 



