106 AGRICULTURE OS THE RHLS'E. 



pation, have destroyed the uninterrupted succession in 

 the growth of timber in the parts we have travelled 

 through, and it will take a long period of fostering to 

 retrieve what has been lost. If we take any of the roads 

 leading into the Odenwald between Darmstadt and 

 Heidelberg, we find wild and magnificent forest scenery 

 that sufficiently repays the traveller who has a taste for 

 nature's rougher scenes, and here, or in the Black Forest 

 near Baden Baden, or the valley of Hell near Freiburg, 

 he can best study the management and observe in all 

 stages the growth and the yield of forest cultivation. 

 From these two forest-tracts and the Spessart Forest on 

 the north bank of the Maine near Aschaffenburg, the 

 supply of timber for exportation is drawn, which is, 

 however, so much diminished in its passage down the 

 Rhine by the demands of the populous districts, that the 

 yearly mass no longer suffices for the consumption of the 

 Dutch shipbuilders. The management of these forests, 

 which is now the object of our attention, is the same in 

 its leading characteristics in all the different states. We 

 avail ourselves therefore of the information communi- 

 cated in detail by a forester of the Grand Duchy of 

 Baden, to show how the people and the forest-owners 

 are situated with regard to this branch of production. 



Our table (page 103) shows the quantity of timber that 

 can be produced upon a given area of land in 120 years. 

 The table is calculated for a measure which is about one- 

 third less than the morgen of Prussia or Baden, so that 

 the reader is here made to feel one difficulty that accom- 

 panies all these investigations in Germany, viz., the 

 endless changes in the weights and measures that the 

 various states adhere to. Another calculation of the 



