446 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



taken as a whole, is excellent, acquired sway. The prin- 

 ciple has its peculiarities, one of which has been discovered 

 to be faulty. However there is no occasion to enter here 

 into details. In the course of time improvement asserted 

 itself over the whole of the empire, although in somewhat 

 differing shapes. In the North the growing of conifers 

 and felling in large blocks, producing bare areas, prevails. 

 So advantageous is the cultivation of conifers held to be 

 that in the fifties the kingdom of Saxony — ^the excellence 

 of whose forestry Sir W. Schlich remarks upon in his little 

 book — advisedly adopted it as a general rule, methodically 

 replacing deciduous trees by pines and spruce. In the 

 South there is more mixed wood, partial felling and natural 

 regeneration, the coniferae being largely represented by 

 silver fir, for which this method of renewing the forest is 

 particularly congenial. However, whatever the mode of 

 cultivation may be, the management is on the whole admir- 

 able — except in the instances already indicated of forests 

 belonging to negligent communes and the peasantry. And 

 education is equally good. Very much the same institutions 

 exist in Switzerland, and the forests of the two countries 

 must be allowed, in the matter of management and expert 

 training, to stand at the head of all others. 



After considering what has been and what is being done 

 abroad, the question remains to be answered : What are 

 we to do at home ? 



By the side of France's 23,000,000 acres, Germany's 

 35,000,000, and Russia's 1,372,917,000 acres (taking the 

 whole of the Russian Empire ; there are 480,000,000 acres 

 in European Russia alone), with our about 3,000,000 acres, 

 possibly to be increased, according to Sir John Stirling 

 Maxwell's estimate, to 9,000,000 — the Coast Erosion Com- 

 mission says 12,000,000 — we can cut only a comparatively 

 modest figure. Also our forest conditions as well as our 

 forest needs are distinctly different from those of other 

 countries. Therefore we can as little hope to reach the 

 desired goal of self-sufficiency by simply copying the pre- 

 tentious forest machinery of France and Germany, as by 

 obsequiously imitating any of their other practices. We 



