38 Government Forestry Abroad. [222 



ing to the city of Zurich; and I am the bolder in my 

 opinion because the Sihlwald has been called the most 

 instructive forest of Europe by one who is perhaps 

 the most experienced forester of the present day. It 

 may not be out of place to quote certain details of 

 its history and management from a paper of the 

 writer's which appeared in Garden and Forest in 

 July and August, 1890. 



The ownership of the city of Zurich in its forest 

 is of very old date. Evidences of the care which 

 the burghers bestowed upon it are found in a series 

 of ordinances which, beginning in 1809 with a rule 

 that no forester might cut wood in the Sihlwald- 

 clear proof that a forest police existed at that early 

 date continued in unbroken succession to that of 

 1417. under which the foundation of the present 

 organization was laid, and finally, in 1697, reached 

 the first technical working plan. It is curious to 

 note, as an evidence of the view of the nature of its 

 interest held by the city, that the policy of adding 

 to the public forest property by purchase, recently 

 inaugurated by the Legislature of the State of New 

 York, was begun by the free city of Zurich nearly 

 two centuries before the discovery of America. 



' In the organization of a normally stocked forest the object of 

 first importance is the cutting each year of an amount of timber 

 equal to the total annual increase over the whole area, and no more. 

 It is further desirable in any long settled community that the for- 

 ests be so managed as to yield a measurably constant return in 

 material. Otherwise difficulties in the supply of labor and the dis- 

 posal of the produce make themselves felt, and the value of the 

 forest to its owner tends to decrease. 



;< In order to attain this steadiness of yield it is obviously neces- 

 sary that a certain number of trees become fit to cut each year. 

 The Sihlwald has accordingly been so " regulated " that areas of 

 equal productive capacity are covered by stocks of every age, from 



