444 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



to compel landowners to plant ; and in the second it author- 

 ised it to give landowners encouragement to plant, by 

 means of subventions. The result has remained trifling. 

 But of late a more ambitious tone has been struck up. 

 The Administration dcs Eaux et Forets has taken the matter 

 in hand. The entire population also has been stirred and, 

 in view of public requirements, the cry has been raised and 

 has become general : reboiso?is les montagnes, defrichons les 

 piaines — which would under existing circumstances be a 

 not inappropriate motto for ourselves. In 1913 a new law 

 was passed permitting permanent corporations {proprietaires 

 imperissahles), which were previously debarred from the 

 practice, to acquire forests as an investment and, subject 

 to the condition of managing them according to the accepted 

 modern rules of forestry, under the supervision of the 

 Administration des Eaux et Forets. That same law also 

 authorises the said Administration to take under its manage- 

 ment forests belonging to private owners, who are willing 

 to submit to the same conditions. At the same time a 

 society was formed having the object of giving back to 

 forest its proper share of the hill-tops, by improving the 

 common pasture and regulating its use. That society — 

 which is a society working not for profit, but for the common 

 good — has already effected a not inconsiderable change for 

 the better. Both these measures were probably suggested 

 by the fruitful operations of municipal bodies and private 

 individuals working under the guidance of M, Chambrelent 

 in the Landes, which had by their money aid, without State 

 help, brought about the re-afforestation of about 1,500 

 acres of pine forest in that Department. The satisfactory 

 results thus obtained have given rise to the formation of 

 similar societies both in Italy (the Society Pro Montihus) 

 and in Spain {Pro Montihus et Silvis). A similar society 

 for the afforestation, as in the Landes, on level land, exists 

 in Denmark since 1866. The recommendation put forward 

 in this country that the State should acquire progressively 

 6,000,000 acres to lay down under forest has aroused in 

 French legislators a not unnatural thirst for proceeding in 

 the matter with direct State aid, to be given in the shape 



