H 



THE FORESTER. 



January, 



district at some length since no American 

 student abroad will fail to see it, while its 

 form of management may be of some in- 

 terest to those who confine their studies to 

 this country. 



The Spessart which is situated in the 

 northwestern portion of Bavaria covers an 

 area of about 115,000 acres. There are 

 few forests of the same size, the whole- 

 sale lumbering of which would realize so 

 enormous a profit. The stand is chiefly 

 Beech and Oak, many of the latter 400 

 years old, with a diameter of three feet or 

 more and a clear length of sixty feet 

 certainly the finest Oak in Europe and 

 sometimes equalled, but seldom excelled, 

 by the White Oak of our Southern and 

 Middle States. One can walk for hours 

 in this district among Oak worth from fifty 

 to two hundred dollars a tree and the total 

 value of this timber in the Spessart is es- 

 timated at nearly one million dollars. 



Bavaria is not a wealthy kingdom. 

 Wars and enforced preparation for war, a 

 generally unfruitful soil, the extravagances 

 of the royal house, and, especially in the 

 South, an idle and pleasure-loving peasan- 

 try, have all led to poverty. Under the 

 careful husbandry of the present ruler, 

 Luitpold, Prince Regent, much has been 

 done to improve matters and especially to 

 remove the heavy load of debt laid upon 

 the people by the vagaries of the unhappy 

 King Ludwig II. However, Bavaria is 

 not yet in such a position that the presence 

 of an additional million of dollars in the 

 treasury would be a matter of little im- 

 portance. In view of this, her conser- 

 vative management of the wealth of the 

 Spessart is all the more praiseworthy. 



The villages in the valleys of the Spes- 

 sart and upon the outskirts of the forest 

 owe their existence to the wood-working 

 industries, which are the natural conse- 

 quence of the presence of so large a body 

 of marketable timber. There are several 

 saw mills where the Oak and Beech are 

 cut up, but the chief industry is the manu- 

 facture of oaken staves for wine casks, 

 which find ready sale in the valleys of the 

 Main and the Rhine. Of the peasantry 

 of the Spessart and its environments, very 

 few are not connected in one way or 



another with the manufacture of lumber 

 or staves or in getting out the raw material, 

 while the great majority are directly de- 

 pendent upon these sources of labor for 

 their daily bread. If the Bavarian govern- 

 ment therefore, were to authorize the cut- 

 tine: of all marketable timber in this dis- 

 trict, without regard to the maintenance of 

 a sustained annual yield, a large number 

 of people would soon be thrown out of 

 employment and great suffering would in- 

 evitably result. To realize fully how 

 severe this suffering would be, would en- 

 tail upon the reader some study of the 

 Bavarian peasant and the economic and 

 social conditions under which he lives. 

 His tools, his mode of life and his educa- 

 tion differ but little from those of his an- 

 cestors, and his language is scarcely intel- 

 ligible to his own countrymen of a better 

 class. To such a man, the power to grap- 

 ple with new conditions, to seek a fresh 

 home and other means of employment, is 

 denied. And even were this not the case, 

 Germany, where the supply of labor ex- 

 ceeds the demand, in practically all the 

 trades and especially in the case of common 

 labor, offers a poor field to those in search 

 of work. 



To lumber on the principle of a sus- 

 tained annual yield, or in other words to 

 take out of a forest in one year the quantity 

 of wood which has actually been produced 

 in that year, is the basis of forest manage- 

 ment in Germany, because it has there 

 been found to yield better returns upon the 

 capital invested in the forest than any other 

 form of management. If the sanctioned 

 annual yield, and no more, be harvested 

 each year, the forest will, under proper 

 care, continue to produce the sanctioned 

 annual yield for ever, just as a good invest- 

 ment continues to produce its annual in- 

 terest. If the sanctioned annual yield be 

 utilized with close regard to the sylvicul- 

 tural requirements of the forest, it will in- 

 crease in proportion with the improvement 

 in the condition of the forest as a whole. 

 There are cases, however, among which 

 is the Spessart, where the utilization of the 

 sanctioned annual yield alone, may not 1 

 prove immediately the best financial policy. 

 This is sometimes the result of local eco- 



