238 France. 



masters, Tristan de Rostaing, who had recommended 

 a method of successive fellings. This prescription, 

 applied pretty nearly uniformly as a matter of law, 

 removed from the officials all spirit of initiative and 

 desire or requirement of improving upon it. No 

 knowledge beyond that of the law was required of 

 them, hence no development of silvicultural methods 

 resulted during the 17th and 18th century. The seed 

 trees left on the felling areas grew into undesirable 

 and branchy "wolves," injuring the aftergrowth, 

 or else were thrown by the wind or died, and many 

 of the areas became undesirable brush. Not until 

 the first quarter of the 19th century was a change 

 in this method proposed through men who imported 

 new ideas from Germany. 



When the inefficiency of the methode a tire et aire 

 was recognized, the only remedy appeared to lie in 

 a clearing system with artificial reforestation (recom- 

 mended by Reaumur and Duhamel); and, indeed, the 

 ordinance of 16G9 recognized the probable necessity 

 of filling up fail places in that manner. Yet the 

 success of the plantings in waste lands does not seem 

 to have brought about much extension of this method 

 to the felling areas. As late as 1862, Clave, com- 

 plaining of the conditions of silviculture in France, 

 and of the ignorance regarding it, refers to the clearing 

 system as methode allemande, the German method. 

 The shelterwood system, la methode du reensemence- 

 ment, which was introduced in theory from Germany 

 by Lorentz in 1827, was hardly applied until the 

 middle of the century. Indeed, the promulgation of 

 this superior method cost Lorentz his position in 1839, 



