FOREST EXPLOITATION. 185 



ment. Reduced to system, it has certain advantages, 

 especially in mountain forests, in which, if the steep slopes 

 be laid bare area by area, avalanches, landslips, and disas- 

 trous torrents might result, but the annual output under 

 this system is never more than two-thirds of that obtained 

 by the rotation system, and there are other objections 

 which it is unnecessary to detail in this paper, which have 

 caused it to be rightly condemned, and now-a-days only 

 retained in the treatment of European forests under pecu- 

 liar or special circumstances.' 



The application of this method of exploitation to artifi- 

 cial plantations appears to be no less satisfactory than it 

 has been to the exploitation of forests with a view to 

 secure a sustained supply of produce. I am not in a posi- 

 tion to form an opinion of the extent to which it is appli- 

 cable to British arboriculture, which has not for its sole 

 object the production of wood, or of a sustained pecuniary 

 return. Nor does it comport with my purpose to give 

 here a full detail of all the various measures which are 

 comprised within this method of exploitation. All that I 

 have proposed to myself to do is to supply an introduction 

 to the study of this. It is not impossible, and not impro- 

 bable, that the study of this may suggest many things 

 which might be done with advantage without a formal 

 adoption in its entirety of this method of culture and 

 exploitation. What I do know is that it supplies a system 

 of forest economy such as is much needed in the treatment 

 of extensive forests in newly settled lands, or in the treat- 

 ment of State forests which have been impoverished and 

 are ready to perish in lands which have been long peopled 

 by colonists from other places. 



The evil connected with the exploitation of such forests 

 by Jardinage, the method generally and extensively 

 adopted, is that this method of exploitation tends to 

 extend and increase that impoverishment, and to destroy 

 what yet remains of these. 



Exploitation according to La Method a tire et aire is not 



