18 THE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



^ The principal abuses which we have observed within 

 the bounds of the said Province in connection with the 

 woods, are primarily in relation to fellings : of which 

 besides their being disposed of at a very bad price, and 

 at two-thirds of what is their value, through the mal- 

 versations and collusions of the officers, it was reported 

 to us that some buyers who had had the price greatly- 

 raised by others, through some misunderstanding between 

 them, bidding against them, reimbursed the loss by carry- 

 ing off three or four times as much wood as they had done 

 in previous years. And the result of all is, that so far 

 from the forests bringing profit to the king, the proceeds 

 do not repay the expenses incurred, to meet which the 

 proceeds have to be supplemented constantly by from 3000 

 to 4000 livres from the general funds of Tours. They have 

 exceeded the ordinary extent of fellings, and they have 

 gone beyond these in the work of exploitation, without 

 these officers being ever called on to make any verification 

 of what had been done, and that although they had them- 

 selves prepared the titles for the merchant-traders at the 

 time of the auction ; whence it followed further, that no 

 baliveaux, or seed-bearing trees, had been reserved in the 

 fellings ; that these had not been ditched; that they had 

 not produced a single new shoot ; and, in fine, that the first 

 canton in the forest, in which they had carried on these 

 fellings, had been destroyed beyond hope of restoration. 

 These same officers, or others, had taken occasion from this 

 subsequently to get the ground passed and adjudged void 

 and waste-land, which would have ultimately caused the 

 extirpation and universal annihiliation of the woods in 

 the Department, if the evil had been continued. 



' The damage which has been done to the aforesaid 

 woods of Bocqueteaux, and the fact that important good 

 woods are alienated at a miserable price by the inter- 

 position of influential persons, and the collusion and 

 prevarication of the officers themselves, are well borne 

 out and attested in the Forest of Bauge, and in those 

 of Berc^, Rouvre, and Boiscarbon. 



