Variety of Forest Control 149 



tlie country in the 15th century declared all forests 

 national property, reserved for shiptimber, and placed 

 them under management. They instituted a forest 

 service, regulated pasturing and forbade clearing. The 

 oak coppice was to be cut in 8 to 13 year rotation, with 

 standards to be left for timber, etc. A reorganization of 

 this service with division into districts is recorded in 

 the 16th century, but the district officers, capitani at 

 boschi, being underpaid, carried on a nefarious trade on 

 their own account and by 1775 the whole country was 

 already ruined in spite of attempts at reform; the 

 "'Karst" problem remained unsolved; and when Aus- 

 tria secured Dalmatia in 1897 that country too was 

 found in the same deplorable condition, the forest area, 

 there in the hands of the peasants, having suffered by 

 pasture and indiscriminate cutting. 



It was the work of Maria Theresa to reform the ad- 

 ministration of the various branches of government and 

 wholesome legislation was also extended to the forest 

 branch by her forest ordinance of 1754, which remained 

 in force until 1852. It relieved the private owners, who 

 held most of the forest area, from the restrictions hith- 

 erto imposed, except in the frontier forests. These, for 

 strategic reasons, were to be managed according to 

 special working plans prepared by the "patriotic econo- 

 mic society." The management of communal forests 

 also was specially regulated. Otherwise the ordinance 

 merely recommended in general terms orderly system 

 and the stopping of abuses. 



In 1771 another forest ordinance proposed to extend 

 the same policy of private imrestricted ownership to 

 the Karst forests, with the idea that thereby better 



