CHAPTER III. 



CONSIDERATION OF THE MERITS AND DEMERITS OF 

 "SARTAGE" AS STILL PRACTISED IN FRANCE. 



THE different designations which have been cited [ante 

 page 56], as given to the practice in Germany, seem to 

 indicate that it is a practice known to the people of some 

 rural districts, as well as to the students of Forst-Wissenschaft 

 or Forest Science, in that country, 



In Switzerland also it is not unknown. Writing in 

 1832 of something similiar in Scotland, Sir Thomas Dick 

 Lauder says : 



' We have seen this tendency to extirpation of forests 

 in action in the Alpine forests, where large patches are 

 burned down by the inhabitants, as heath would be on a 

 hillside in Scotland, merely to increase the herbage and the 

 value of the pasturage of the places where the trees grow. 

 Uncouth black spots are thus frequently created in the 

 middle of the dark green forests of the Swiss mountains, 

 and the scenes of gloomy destruction which these exhibit 

 when visited, with the huge trees standing half consumed, 

 and stretching out their charred branches against the 

 snowy peaks, and the clear blue sky, beggars description/ 



And in France it is a practice recognised both in Forest 

 Science and in Forest management. I have cited a state- 

 ment of M. Parade, one of the founders of the French 

 School of Forestry at Nancy, to the effect of its being a 

 practice of very great antiquity ; but what was apparently 

 practised formerly extensively in France is now adopted 

 there only in special circumstances. 



In France it is found that the oak, and especially a 

 hardy species or variety of the oak known in France as 



