INTRODUCTION. 21 



Haute-SaSne and of the C6te-d' Or, of the Doubs and of the Jura. 

 Each of these possesses about 625,000 acres of such forests. The 

 majority of the old Communes hold some acres. More or less oxten- 

 sive, more or less richly stocked, these latter, clearly demarcated and 

 enclosed by a ditch or a wall, are protected and well conserved. 

 They yield wood and timber for the inhabitants as well as form a 

 valuable source of income for the municipal treasury. 



This simple sketch of the general distribution of our forests shows 

 that the poorest districts from a forest point of view are not, as one 

 might expect, our fertile plains. They are the bare rocks of Brit- 

 tany and the elevated plateaux of the centre of France. At a date 

 far removed from the present, these districts lost nearly all the forest 

 wealth with which nature had originally endowed them. The pros- 

 perous regions possess excellent forests, and the majority of them 

 have even large extents of such forests, i 



Besides the extreme variety which our forests offer in point of 

 geographical and hypsometrical distribution, they present a most 

 admirable variety in other respects also. To take species, aspect, 

 regime, and density of standing material, there is not one of these 

 elements of forest growth that does not vary from point to point. 

 From the larch to the Aleppo pine, from the holm oak to the aspen, 



(1) Algeria, out of a total area of 75,000,000 aores, has scarcely 5 millions under forest, 

 aud more than half of this is situated i u the province of Constantine, which contains 

 the greater proportion of the high forests of the colony. If we throw out of aooouat 

 425,000 aores of forests of oork-oiik made over in full proprietorship to private indi- 

 viduals, 187,500 acros given up to the tribes, and 2,500,000 aores devastated by 

 grazing aud kept down thus in the condition of scrub, we see that the area for the 

 production of trees does not exceed 2,000,000 aores. 



The most widely distributed species are the Aleppo pine, the hnlm and the cork 

 oaks. Those most important as timber yielding trees are the Chine '/jiJea (Quorcus 

 Lusitanica) aud the cedar. The Aleppo pine is found chiefly on the interior plateaux 

 of the T'ell, and notably in the province of Algiers, 



The holm oak grows, in compauy with other trees, at elevations not exoeedin? 

 3,300 feet. The habitat of the cork oak is well defined on the coast by the crystal- 

 line schists. It is said that 072,500 acres of forests of this tree still belong to the 

 State. The Zean oak is met with throughout the Tell district. It grows up to 

 4,900 feet above the sea. Forests of it are those of Beni Salah (Bone), of Beni 

 Foural (Djidjelli), of Akfadour (Bougie), of Ouled-D'hia ('Tunisian frontier^. The 

 area of the high forests of this species is estimated at 2iO,OUj acres. The cedar 

 grows over an area of about 75,000 aores in the mountains which separate the inter- 

 mediate region from the high plateaux and tbe Sahara, at an elevation uf about 5,000 

 feet. It forms the forests of the Aures, the Bilezma (province of Constantine) and of 

 Tdniet-el-Had (Cre;it Atbis) west of the province of Algiers, This last forest is, it 

 appears, a marvel to behold. 



But the forests of Algeria are devastated every year by fire. In 12 years, from 1861 

 to 1875, this pest swept over 625,000 acres. The Arab seeks to destroy, in a country 

 that is escaping from his grasp, what remains of the forests, althjngh these are 

 more necessary therefrom a hydrological point of view than as a source of fuel supply. 



