>0 Government Forestry Abroad. 



the same. Thus far, however, the action of the Gov- 

 ernment is alike not only throughout Prussia hut in 

 all parts of Germany. It prevents absolutely the 

 treatment of any forest of this class under improvi- 

 dent or wasteful methods; nor does it allow any 

 measure to be carried into effect which may deprive 

 posterity of the enjoyment which it has a right to 

 expect. How far the details vary may be gathered 

 from the fact that while in the Prussian provinces of 

 Rhineland and Westphalia the village communities 

 appoint their own forest officers and manage their 

 own forests, subject only to a tolerably close over- 

 sight on the part of the . controlling staff, in the for- 

 mer Duchy of Nassau, now Prussian territory, their 

 share in the management does not extend beyond the 

 right to sell the timber cut under the direction of the 

 Government Oberforster, the right and obligation to 

 pay for all the planting and other improvements 

 which may be deemed necessary, and the rather hol- 

 low privilege of expressing their opinion. But how- 

 ever galling so extensive an interference with the 

 rights of property may appear, it is none the less 

 unquestionably true that in France, as well as in 

 Germany, the State management of communal for- 

 ests lies at the root of the prosperity of a very large 

 proportion of the peasant population, and the evils 

 which have attended its withdrawal in individual 

 cases are notorious. While on the one hand villages 

 whose taxes are wholly paid by their forests are by 

 no means rare, on the other the sale of communal 

 forest property in certain parts of Germany in 1848 

 has been followed with deplorable regularity by the 

 impoverishment of the villages which were unwise 

 enough to allow it. 



