22 Government Forestry Abroad. [206 



vate ownership lands which, by reason of their soil 

 and situation, will contribute better to the common- 

 wealth under cultivation than as forest. In this way 

 the forests whose preservation is most important are 

 gradually passing into the hands of the State; yet 

 the total area of its wood lands is increasing but 

 slowly. 



The policy of State aid in the afforestation of waste 

 lands important through their situation on high 

 ground or otherwise is fully recognized (a notable 

 example exists upon the Hohe Venn near Aix-la- 

 Chapelle). but the absence of considerable mountain 

 chains has given to this branch of Government influ- 

 ence very much less prominence than in the Alps of 

 Austria, Switzerland and France, where its advan- 

 tages appear on a larger and more striking scale. 



In closing this brief sketch of forest policy in 

 Prussia, you will perhaps allow me to refer for a mo- 

 ment to the erroneous ideas of German forest man- 

 agement which have crept into our literature. They 

 have done so, I believe, partly through a desire of 

 the advocates of forestry to prove too much, and 

 they injure the cause of forestry, because they tend to 

 make forest management ridiculous in the eyes of our 

 citizens. The idea has arisen that German methods 

 are exaggeratedly artificial and complicated, and not 

 unaturally the inference has been made that forestry 

 in itself is a thing for older and more densely popu- 

 lated countries, and that forest management is inap- 

 plicable and incapable of adaptation to the conditions 

 under which we live. It is true, on the contrary, 

 that the treatment of German forests is distinguished 

 above all things by an elastic adaptability to circum- 

 stances, which is totally at variance with the iron- clad 



