294 Italy, 



million plants and over 500 pounds of seed, and furnish- 

 ing advice free of charge. 



In 1897, again a commission was instituted to formu- 

 late new legislation. This commission reported in 1902, 

 declaring that all accessible forests were more or less 

 devastated, accentuating the needs of water management, 

 and proposing a more rigorous definition of ban forests, 

 a strict supervision of communal forests, and the man- 

 agement of private properties under working plans by 

 accredited foresters or else under direct control of the 

 forest department, the foresters to be paid by the State, 

 which is to recover from the owners. 



It is to be noted that Italy is perhaps the only coun- 

 try where forest influence on health conditions was 

 legally recognized, by the laws of 1877 and 1888. The 

 belief that deforestation of the maremnae, the marshy 

 lowlands betweeen Pisa and Naples, had produced the 

 malarial fever which is rampant here, led the Trappist 

 monks of the cloister at Tre Fontane to make planta- 

 tions of Eucalyptus (84,000) beginning in 1870, the 

 State assisting by cessions of land for the purpose. A 

 commission, appointed to investigate the results, in 

 1881, threw doubt on the effectiveness of the plantation, 

 finding the observed change in health conditions due 

 to improvement of drainage; and lately the mosquito 

 has been recognized as the main agency in propagating 

 the fever. The new propositions did not any more 

 recognize this claimed influence as a reason for public 

 intervention. Nevertheless, to two Italians is due the 

 credit of having found the true cause of salubriousness 

 of forest air, namely in the absence of pathogenic bac- 

 teria. 



