8 Government Forestry Abroad. [192 



lands value. The increasing density of population 

 and the more complicated needs of life then gave 

 gradual rise to more vigorous attacks upon the forest. 

 For a time the demand was small and the areas cut 

 over easily covered themselves with young growth. 

 The forest renewed itself and maintained its pro- 

 ductive power. But, as the demand increased, the 

 areas cut over increased with it. and the actual re- 

 growth 110 longer kept pace with the quantity of 

 timber which it was called upon to yield. At the 

 same time the land needed for agriculture was being 

 taken from the timbered area, and the wood lands, 

 attacked along two lines, were beginning to suffer 

 seriously. 



''It is true," says Dr. Gayer, 1 "that the forest belonged at that time 

 chiefly to the herdsmen and the game, but the steadily increasing 

 tendency to destruction of a growing population made the general 

 cultivation of the chase an undoubted advantage to the forest. 

 Indeed the hunter has been at all times one of its best friends. For 

 numerous acts of violence may be referred to, extending over the 

 whole of mediieval times, as a result of which much free land 

 belonging to the early communities, or the rights to its enjoyment, 

 passed in course of time into the hands of the rulers. From a legal 

 standpoint these are indeed events to be deplored, and from them 

 the oppressive burden of actual prescriptive rights takes its rise, but 

 the present extensive State forest holdings in Germany have chiefly 

 to thank this universal love of venerie for their existence. 



" It is unquestionably true that the forests have been at no time in 

 a more deplorable condition than in the second half of the Middle 

 Ages, and thence on to the middle of the last century. The results 

 which must follow this condition of affairs were evident, and led 

 to the most serious fears of a widespread timber famine. And 

 although this foreboding, as it filled the minds of men toward int- 

 end of the Mediaeval period, and as it was brought to the attention 

 of the people through numerous publications, may have been exag- 

 gerated, nevertheless, in view of the commercial relations of the 



'Der Wald im Wechsel der Zeiten. Inaugural address as Rector 

 of the University of Munich, November, 1889. 



