PREFACE vil 



Forests, a population personally interested in preventing and 

 extinguishing fires. 



In Corsica the lack of sufficient means of transportation 

 has made it necessary to sell timber in amounts large enough, 

 and extending over a number of years great enough, to justify 

 the purchaser in building the indispensable wagon roads for 

 himself. Defective transportation and low prices of timber are 

 often controlling factors with French Colonial foresters, as they 

 are with us. 



In Algeria the simplicity, economy, and efficiency of forest 

 administration has peculiar interest for us, while the report of 

 an official commission, which recognized the maintenance of 

 brush cover as of vital importance, carries the thought of an 

 American forester at once to the brush covered National Forests 

 which are so potent in protecting the water supply of southern 

 California. 



It is not without real satisfaction that we find ourselves, 

 through Mr. Woolsey's studies, able to realize that here and 

 there we Americans have surpassed in practice the men whose 

 example means so much to us. Thus in Corsica trespass upon 

 forest land still offers one of the most serious problems of 

 forest administration, whereas upon our National Forests of 

 the West, as Mr. Woolsey well points out, trespass is practically 

 a thing of the past. Our methods of grazing control, it is pleasant 

 also to know, lose nothing by comparison with those of the 

 French in northern Africa. 



I have often had occasion to advise American forest students 

 to make themselves familiar with the practice of forestry in 

 France and Germany and then to forget it. It is only when 

 such knowledge passes, as someone has said, out of memory 

 into experience, that it becomes really valuable. Such a book 

 as this almost leads me to revise that statement, for it gives us 

 not merely the facts of forest practice, but the reasons which 

 underlie that practice, and the discussion and application of it 

 referred to the forest conditions and problems in our own land. 

 Forest pioneers, like the men whose work this volume describes, 

 have much in common wherever their work may lie, while the 



