442 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



space choked with underwood and faulty growth of trees. 

 And evidently there was — in former times at least — much 

 carelessness in the management. My friend, the late M. 

 Lorenz, son of the founder of the High School of Forestry 

 at Nancy, and himself for some time Inspecteuv General des 

 Forets de France, with whom I talked much forestry in his 

 native province of Alsace, could not deny this, but put it 

 upon " the Empire, which," as he put it, " always had 

 money for wars, but never for useful purposes." Timber 

 merchants formed " rings," so as to buy the timber dirt 

 cheap at the public sales and, it being part of their contract 

 that they should resow, strewed out carelessly indifferent 

 seed. Very possibly the toleration of such practice was 

 due to a mistaken principle of which M. Lorenz complained, 

 adopted (at that time at least) in the French administration, 

 under which forest officers were kept in one and the same 

 district, which of course they came to know thoroughly 

 well. However, such practice tends, in the first place, to 

 give the officer an incomplete command of his science as 

 a whole ; and, in the second, it at any rate planes the way 

 for local personal liaisons, which may work to the detriment 

 of the State. In Germany forestry officers are purposely 

 moved about, from time to time, from one place to an- 

 other, in order that they may in this way learn more about 

 their craft generally, and also in order that they may not 

 become entangled by local ties. M. Lorenz during his 

 time of office endeavoured to graft the German practice 

 upon the French system, which is otherwise excellent, but 

 failed to convert his superiors to his view. 



It is curious, by the way, to observe the changing phases 

 through which the keeping of forests — often enough there 

 was no " forestry " in it at all — ^has passed in various 

 countries. France has, like ourselves, had its times of well- 

 kept and well-stocked forests. The heights of the Alps 

 were, as Viollet-le-Duc has pointed out, covered with them. 

 There was timber then, there was a softer climate, there 

 was shelter, and there were none of those devastating torren- 

 tial floods which now annually destroy so much property. 

 The water trickled down gently, doing a minimum of mis-r 



