436 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



— as well as Belgium, under the guidance of M. Drumeaux — 

 provided a useful precedent for forest insurance, by co- 

 operative means. De Nederlandsche Weidemaatschappij 

 has devised an effective scheme of the sort. 



But to return to France — where, by the way, forest insurance 

 is, for the time, still only poorly provided for, since existing 

 practices place hindrances in its way. We see there mag- 

 nificent forests and observe the methodical course of techni- 

 cal education through which its upgrowing foresters are 

 put. In the matter of hard wood, which up to the present 

 time has specifically interested us, probably there is no 

 country that has more to teach us. In fact France has 

 taught us afresh how to grow oak — which we knew well 

 enough three hundred years ago, but had forgotten in the 

 interval. And on more points than one does France supply 

 a better objective for our learning than any other country, 

 because in the matter of climate, soil, the lie of the country, 

 its wants and habits, and the prevalent taste for hard wood 

 and mixed wood, it comes nearest to our own conditions. 

 We have not got those vast sweeps of sand of Germany, 

 which of necessity make the pine the favourite cultivated 

 tree there, except on those high mountain chains, say, on 

 the Bohemian frontier, for which of course spruce, raised 

 of late to higher favour by the development of the wood- 

 pulp industry, coupled with its remarkable readiness to 

 spread out its roots on shallow surface soil, and its fitness 

 for high altitudes, is better suited. 



But really, as a craft, forestry stands higher in Germany, 

 and Germany is, among other things, in a position to teach 

 us just what at the present moment we particularly want 

 to know. That is, in the first place, how to cover our bare 

 mountain- sides with timber ; and, next, how to manage 

 forest well on private estates. Our bare hills do not re- 

 semble the Alps or the Pyrenees, which at the present time 

 constitute the great preoccupation of the French rehoiseurs 

 on highly urgent grounds, which do not quite apply to 

 ourselves/ ;> That is, that for want of cover, by forest, stem- 

 ming the sudden downpours from the hill-tops, in times of 

 floods, the soil is being bodily washed down to the destruc- 



