90 ANNUAL REPORT OF 



increases, while on the smaller estates the forest area 

 probably decreases. 



Some of the forests of Prussia are attractive resorts for 

 travelers, and especially pedestrians, who enjoy the ex- 

 cellent roads. Of the celebrated Thuringian chain, which 

 is 70 miles in length by from 8 to 25 miles in breadth, a 

 writer says: "The successive hills melt into each other 

 in gentle undulations, forming a continuous and easily 

 traced comb, and only the northwest slopes are precip- 

 itous, and seamed with winding gorges. This mountain 

 range incloses many charming and romantic valleys and 

 glens; the most prominent feature of its picturesque 

 scenery is formed by the fine forests, chiefly of pines and 

 firs, which clothe most of the hills/' 



Prussia comprises nearly two-thirds of the entire ex- 

 tent of the German Empire, yet its area lacks consider- 

 able of being twice that of Minnesota. Thirty-one per 

 cent of its soil is predominantly sandy, and on the whole 

 probably is not as good as that of Minnesota; yet it sus- 

 tains a population twenty-five times as large as that of 

 Minnesota. This fact might well find a lodgment in the 

 minds of our statesmen, that whereas Prussia annually 

 derives a net revenue of 11.33 an acre ^ rom ner 6,000,000 

 acres of state forest, our state, from about an equal area 

 of land in its borders, adapted to forest, derives no regu- 

 lar net revenue at all. 



DUCHY OF SAX-MEININGEN. 



The area of state forests is 106,530 acres; of communal 

 forests, 84,460 acres; of private forests, 71,850 acres; 

 miscellaneous, 1,480 acres; in the aggregate, 264,310 

 acres, being equal to 42.4 per cent of the total area of 

 the state. The state forests comprise 24 units of ad- 



