24 Government Forestry Abroad. ['-208 



All forest management, as contrasted with our 

 present hand-to-mouth system of lumbering, must 

 mean the exchange of larger temporary profits for 

 returns which are indeed smaller, but which, under 

 favorable circumstances, will continue and increase 

 indefinitely. 



Under these conditions I do not believe that forest 

 management in the United States will present even 

 serious technical difficulties. It only asks the oppor- 

 tunity to prove itself sound, practical and altogether 

 good. 



FRANCE. 



In France, which stands with Germany at the head 

 of the nations as regards thoroughness of forest 

 policy, the large extent of government and other 

 public forests is in excellent condition. The struggle 

 for their care and preservation, the necessary ante- 

 cedent of their present favorable situation, has a 

 history which reaches back far beyond the time when 

 the United States became a nation. Says M. Boppe, 

 in the introduction of his Traite de Sylviculture: 1 



"In early times, during the Middle Ages, and until the begin- 

 ning of modern times, the knowledge of the specialists was summed 

 up in certain practices of lumbering put together in a way to satisfy 

 needs Which were purely local. The wood was cut methodically, 

 but without much care as to the manner in which it would grow 

 again; that was the business of Dame Nature. Speaking of France 

 alone, it is known that towards the middle of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, in spite of the fact that lumbering was restricted by limited 

 demand (since, in the absence of the more powerful means of 

 transportation, the wood must be put in use almost where it was 

 felled); in spite of the repeated intervention of royal authority, the 

 lack of foresight and abuses of all sorts resulted in the notable 



1 Paris, 1889. 



