RECLAMATION OF WASTE LAND. 439 



timber merchants), the legal provisions var^^. And, even 

 where they are so strict that, as in Baden, there is a legal 

 interdict upon the selhng of forest land apart from the 

 holding, and the Government has the legal right, in cases 

 of gross mismanagement, to seize and sequestrate forest 

 property, those legal provisions are only too often treated 

 as a mere dead letter. And although, in consequence, there 

 is much excellently managed communal forest property, 

 the income from which relieves the burgesses from the 

 necessity of paying rates, and in some cases even gives 

 them a bonus, in other instances there is wretched destruc- 

 tion of forest in communal forests, for instance in parts 

 of the Black Forest. In Prussia the matter is — very 

 judiciously — ordered all the better since the great popular 

 upheaval of the middle of the past century made a thorough 

 revision of things necessary, in connection with the Ahlosung 

 or abolition of common rights in the forest — which in Ger- 

 many was the main " common " for the peasantry. The 

 peasantry, who had browsing rights and also a right to 

 gather wood, and also to claim as their own small timber 

 — on one estate I remember that it was up to three inches 

 thickness — among the timber felled, and who did great 

 mischief, was bought off, and dualism came to an end. 



In France things are not quite the same. There is not 

 anything like the same affection for forest and forestry as 

 in Germany. Such as there is has only recently been 

 awakened by the observation that the long continued 

 destruction of forest on mountain chains like the Alps has 

 wrought terrific havoc to the country, more particularly 

 in the matter of inundations. The recent inundation of 

 Paris (in 1910) has acted us a warning eye-opener. It 

 has been pointed out that that inundation would not have 

 occurred if there had still been the old forests on the moun- 

 tain-sides, the great value of which Viollet-le-Duc in his 

 day pointed out, to act, as M. Descombes has put it, like 

 a " sponge," retaining the flood- water and letting it run 

 down gently. In Germany the " deutscher Wald," in 

 honour of which't Mendelssohn has composed one of his 

 most popular songs, is a tradition that has entered deep 



