INTRODUCTION. 15 



forest of Orleans, our most extensive plain forest, containing 85,000 

 acres all belonging to the State, worked as copse wood and im- 

 poverished long ago. On the other side of the Loire, to the south, 

 lies the Sologne, a poor district, which was covered with fine forests 

 three hundred years ago, but has since been denuded and become 

 private property, the owners practising largely both Agriculture and 

 Sylviculture. Here we could find 500,000 acres fit for high forests 

 capable of producing all the oak timber that we now obtain from 

 abroad. The district of la Brenne, more feverish still than the 

 Sologne, could also contribute towards the same end on a magni- 

 ficent scale. Indeed it is in the mild climate of Central France that 

 we find our finest high forests of oak ; as instances we need mention 

 only the forests of Bell^me, of Bersay, and of Troneais, too little 

 known, although so deserving to be known. But these forest masses 

 preserved here and there are as rare as they are valuable. In the entire 

 rcion the forests under State control do not comprise more than 

 412,500 acres, or 2^ percent, of the total area. 



The North-East region, with the seven Departments which now 

 remain after the cession of Alsace and part of Lorraine, is still the 

 richest of our forest districts, One-fourth of its area is occupied by 

 forests, and these good forests — copses with standards in the plains 

 and high forests of silver fir in the hills. In other words, the wooded 

 area ao^gregates 2,750,000 acres, of which 1,125,000 acres belong to 

 private individuals, the same acreage to Communes, and 500,000 

 acres to the State. These forests, so beneficial from a climatic 

 point of view in an entirely continental region, produce on the hills 

 and mountaiils very valuable and esteemed timber. In the spaces 

 intervening between them, agriculture is prosperous and obtains 

 from the soil produce, the value of which, £4,480,000 per Depart- 

 ment, exceeds the average in France and is daily increasing. It is 

 a fact to be noted that the forests improve as you go from the 

 plains of Champagne to the highest ridge of the Vosges, at the same 

 time that the proportion of them belonging to the State goes on 

 increasino'. To see this, we may, for example, compare the hill near 

 Bheims with the valley of G^rardmer. The first, a large circular 

 round topped hill, situated between Rheims and Epernay, wears a 

 girdle of all the finest vines of Champagne; the top is crowned 

 with a forest of about 68,000 acres (7,130 acres state, 5,130 com- 

 munal, and 55,150 private), which produces oak of excellent quality, 

 just what is wanted by the vinegrower. But the greater portion of 



