NATURAL REGENERATION OF FRENCH FORESTS 



BY THEODORE S. WOOLSEY, JR., L. d'H., D. S. O. 



FORMERLY LIEUTENANT-COLONEL ENGINEERS, U. S. A.; MEMBER INTERALLIED WAR WOOD COMMITTEE, 



PARIS, 1917-1919 



Illustrations by Commandant Thiollier, French Army. (Service des Eaux et Forets.) 



OVER three centuries ago Colbert, Minister under 

 Louis XIV, warned France that some day she 

 would perish for want of wood. At that period 

 wood was used largely for fuel, as well as for building ; 

 the coal and cement age had not commenced. Each 

 locality depended upon nearby supplies because trans- 

 port to any distance was impracticable. Under these 

 conditions Colbert's warn- 

 ing was heeded and in 1669 

 he was able to put into ef- 

 fect a Forest Code, which 

 insured the protection of 

 French forests. Under the 

 stress of the Napoleonic 

 wars it is true that the re- 

 sources were further de- 

 pleted but in the eighteenth 

 and nineteenth centuries 

 Demontzey and Bremontier 

 firmly established the prac- 

 ticability of reforesting the 

 dunes and the eroded Alps. 

 During the great war 

 French forests have been 

 heavily cut, and have been 

 destroyed by shell fire to 

 such an extent that it will 

 take a century to make 

 good the loss. Timber 

 supplies cannot be replaced 

 until the plantations ma- 

 ture and it takes two cen- 

 turies to grow commercial 

 oak ; a century and a half 

 to produce spruce or silver 

 fir logs, and a century to 

 grow pine. Hardwood cop- 

 pice produces fuel in twenty 

 to thirty years, but modern 

 industry requires coal or 

 electricity for power, in- 

 stead of wood or charcoal. 



Had France allowed the destruction of her forests 

 during the nineteenth century the Allies might have lost 

 the war. Not only were the wood supplies required 

 locally, to economize ocean tonnage and railway trans- 

 port, but the forests themselves were needed as a line of 

 defense. Without such forests, as Compeigne, Villiers- 

 Cotterets, Coucy, St. Gobain, Foret de la Mont de Reims 

 and others it is probable that the German drives in 1918 

 would have been more successful than they were and 

 they nearly succeeded as it was. It is at least significant 



A LARCH STAND IN THE FRENCH ALPS WHERE THE SOIL MUST 

 BE WOUNDED TO SECURE NATURAL REGENERATION. 



that the German advance on Paris in June, 1918, was 

 stopped in the forests of Compeigne and Villers-Cotterets. 

 The value of forests as a means of defense is so recog- 

 nized that the French Forest Code provides that no private 

 forests can be denuded, in the frontier zones, without the 

 specific approval of the civil and military authorities. 

 The French forester has always been a close student 



of soil conditions, seed 

 crops, and methods of seed 

 germination because his 

 ideal has always been to 

 obtain the natural regen- 

 eration of forests, and to- 

 day, high labor costs will 

 make artificial forestation 

 almost prohibitive. The 

 Germans have favored the 

 clear cutting of stands, fol- 

 lowed by planting or sow- 

 ing. They argued that 

 natural regeneration was 

 the more costly in the end, 

 because to naturally regen- 

 erate forests took fifteen to 

 twenty years, and that even 

 then the results were un- 

 satisfactory. Probably both 

 schools of technique are 

 correct. With the North- 

 ern climate of Germany the 

 artificial replacement of 

 stands is often obligatory 

 but in France, with plenty 

 of rainfall, rich soil, and 

 species that produce seed 

 crops in abundance, natural 

 regeneration has succeeded 

 and will be continued, ex- 

 cept where normal forest 

 conditions must be restored 

 in the devastated war zones 

 and where the damages of 

 past over-cutting have not yet been completely repaired. 

 The French forester is a student of nature. He has 

 been taught to "I miter la nature, hater son oeuvre, telle 

 es la maxime fondamentale de la sylviculture." His 

 simplest problem is where he can clear cut the entire 

 stand and yet secure his second crop without planting; 

 his difficulties increase as the number of cuttings must 

 be varied in degree, and in amount, so as to tempt the 

 next generation of trees to gain a footing in competition 

 with grass, weeds, and undesirable species. But he 



