RECLAMATION OF WASTE LAND. 445 



of State credit or at any rate a State guarantee, to make 

 such credit accessible elsewhere. The latest shape which 

 that idea has taken is to create a Credit foresfier, as there 

 is already a Credit agricole, which is freely resorted to. 

 The Bill now before Parliament proposes that the Credit 

 Fonder should be empowered to advance money on forest 

 security in the same way that it does on other real property 

 — which under its constitution of 1852 as it stands now it 

 cannot do — and that, to secure such loan, the State should 

 give its guarantee for the advances. M. Meline has been 

 at pains to demonstrate to ParHament that forest property 

 may well be made the object of a long-term loan, with 

 accumulating interest, inasmuch as such accumulating 

 interest will after fifty years represent only the sevenfold 

 value of the first outlay, whereas the value of the pledged 

 object will after the same period amount to the tenfold. 

 It is to be understood that the forest pledged must be 

 insured against fire, and that the State, guaranteeing the 

 loan, must also control the management of the forest. 



In Germany the advance to better, modern forestry has 

 followed — in a slightly different way — the same line as 

 among ourselves. Germany has, like ourselves, had its 

 era of neglected forest — forest valued more as a vast game 

 preserve than as a money-producing investment. But that 

 was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this 

 case the deterioration was not the result of revolutions, 

 but rather of political advance in the reverse direction. 

 Crown and nobles set the rights of the Nation at naught and, 

 step by step, constituted themselves masters of the forests, 

 which they regarded only as ground for sport, since in those 

 olden days of comparatively sparse population Nature was 

 considered fully equal to the task of producing sufficient 

 timber, however severely forest might be ravaged. How- 

 ever such reckless wastefulness brought about its own 

 nemesis. Timber grew scarce. About 1700 an apprehen- 

 sion became general that there might not be enough. 

 Amendment was resolved upon. Better management was 

 introduced, at first only ver3/ hesitatingly. It is really 

 only since the last century that the new principle, which. 



