328 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



although wood prices for the entire Prussian cut of 

 300,000,000 cubic feet have in that period advanced 

 only 37 per cent ; while Saxony expended 80 cents 

 per acre in the beginning of the century and netted 

 95 cents, to-day she spends three times the amount 

 and has increased her revenue nearly fivefold. 



The table of the distribution of expenditures is 

 especially interesting, showing that even in Saxony, 

 the very state where the timber is usually cut clean 

 and the land restocked entirely by planting with 

 nursery stock, the item of planting, etc., uses up 

 the smallest portion of the income. 



From this brief outline it will be apparent that 

 forestry in its modern sense is not a new, untried 

 experiment in Germany, but that care and active 

 legislative consideration of the forest wealth dates 

 back more than four centuries ; that the accurate 

 official records of several states for the last one 

 hundred years prove conclusively that wherever a 

 systematic, continuous effort has been made, as in 

 the case of all state forests, whether of large or 

 small territories, the enterprise has been successful ; 

 that it has proved of great advantage to the country, 

 furnished a handsome revenue where otherwise no 

 returns could be expected, led to the establishment 

 of permanent woodworking industries, and has 

 given opportunity for labor and capital to be active, 

 not spasmodically, not speculatively, but continu- 

 ously and with assurance of success. This rule 

 has, fortunately, not a single exception. To be 



