208 France. 



coppice and of coppice with standards characterize the 

 holdings of the municipal and private ovmers and the 

 selection forest still plays a considerable part even in the 

 State forests; the method of shelterwood in compart- 

 ments, being still more under discussion than practice. 



When the ineflBciency of the methode a tire^aire was 

 recognized the only remedy appeared to lie in a clearing 

 system with artificial reforestation which was, however, 

 only begun in the 19th century. 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, complaining 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 meth- 

 ode du reensemencement, 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, and other officers suffered similarly for 

 this "German propaganda." 



The only credit in silvicultural direction which be- 

 longs to the French foresters is the development of new 

 and fertile ideas regarding the operations of thinnings ; 

 here the differentiation of the crop into the final harvest 

 {le haut) and the nurse crop {le has) (see page 105) and 

 the differentiation of the operations, par le haut and par 

 le las, seems to have been for the first time described by 

 Boppe in 1887. Indeed, the theory of thinnings, at least, 

 seems to have been well understood by Buffon, who ad- 

 vanced his theories in a memoir to the Academy of 

 France in 1774, and gives a very clear exposition of the 

 value of thinnings and improvement cuttings. 



