CHAPTER V. 



METHOD OF FOREST EXPLOITATION NOW FOLLOWED IN 

 FRANCE, AND KNOWN AS "LA METHODE DES COM- 



THE method of exploitation enjoined in France under the 

 designation La Methode cb tire et aire, and the reform of 

 abuses in the forest service instituted along with it there, 

 commended themselves to many who were, from various 

 considerations, seeking to arrest the destruction of forests 

 on the Continent of Europe. But a hundred years sufficed 

 to show that this method of exploitation as it was then 

 practised was not the Ne plus ultra of forest management ; 

 and a hundred and fifty years sufficed to produce a fresh 

 evolution or new development of it, known in France as 

 La Methode des Compartiments. Details of this come not 

 under discussion here : it pertains to the nineteenth century, 

 not to the seventeenth, and it was devised in Saxony, not in 

 France. But both as a perfecting of the French device, 

 and as a development of this which is now becoming 

 universally adopted, it demands some notice. 



In order to secure the full benefit of the device it was 

 found to be necessary to divide the wood or forest, not 

 into equal, but into equivalent portions subdivisions, not 

 of equal area, but of equivalent produce. Of the method 

 of exploitation d, tire et aire, the following may be taken as 

 supplying a rough and rude illustration, in its application 

 to a coppice wood and a timber forest. If the coppice be 

 one, which may profitably be cut down every twenty years, 

 by dividing it into twenty equal or equivalent portions, 

 and cutting one, but only one, of these each year, there 



