EFFECT OF THE WAR ON FORESTS OF FRANCE 



713 



The area actually carrying trees large enough for the 

 saw is therefore not as large as is suggested by the total 

 forest area of the country. When, too, one speaks of 

 eight million acres of high forest, it should be recalled 

 that only a proportionate part carries merchantable 



France has several main centers of timber production. 

 The largest is in the flat, sandy plains north of the 

 Pyrenees Mountains. Here is an area of some two 

 million acres largely covered with Maritime Pine, a 

 region once unproductive and backward and now the 



Photograph by Underwood and Underwood 



WOOD HAD A THOUSAND USES 



The forests of France, not only in the fighting zone but far behind the lines, were called on to supply the timber needed for trench construction, 

 for crossties, poles for new telephone and telegraph lines, planks and logs for repairing roads, firewood for fuel and so on through a long list, 

 importation of timber being cut to a minimum. 



timber, the balance being covered with middle-aged and 

 young growth. 



The total actual amount of wood materials grown 

 in France annually aggregated before the war about 

 nine hundred million cubic feet, and approximately this 

 amount was utilized each year. Of this amount, how- 

 ever, only about eighty million cubic feet was in the 

 form of material for lumber, the balance being used 

 for railroad cross-ties, poles, mine props, fuel and by- 

 products. While France has been well off in the 

 smaller forest materials, she has had a deficit in 

 lumber production amounting to eighty million cubic 

 feet, or almost exactly the amount she produces 

 from her own forests. This amount of lumber she 

 had to import. 



center of a thriving turpentine and lumber industry. 

 A second large center of timber production is in the 

 eastern mountains ; the Vosges with an area of some 

 two hundred thousand acres, and the Jura with probably 

 an equal aggregate area. Here the forests are composed 

 of the admirable silver fir, mixed with spruce, beech and 

 pine. The silver fir is a real lumber tree, carrying when 

 ripe one thousand to fifteen hundred board feet. Not 

 uncommonly it reaches a height of one hundred and 

 thirty, and rarely one hundred and fifty feet. It rivals in 

 size our own eastern white pine. Scattered throughout 

 France are excellent woodland tracts of splendid oak 

 and beech, some of the trees one hundred and fifty to 

 two hundred years old. There is also abundant Scots 

 pine that often yields twenty thousand board feet per acre. 



