PRACTICAL FOEESTRY. 41 



forests has reached, perhaps, its highest development. The foresters 

 of France have perfected a most practical and effective general sys- 

 tem of forestry and have created the difficult art of controlling the 

 floods of mountain torrents by planting trees. The Repubhc of 

 Switzerland, by the use of methods most instructive to citizens of 

 the United States, has developed a type of government forest policy 

 more worthy of our attention and imitation than any other in Europe. 

 In Australia and New Zealand forestry has already made important 

 advances. In Canada the English have made real progress in for- 

 estry. The Government sells the timber from its forests, but retains 

 possession of the lands and employs fire guards". At the Cape of Good 

 Hope they have an excellent forest service. In British India they 

 have met and answered many questions which still confront the 

 American forester, and in a little more than thirty years have created 

 a forest service of great merit and high achievement. The United 

 States has scarcely yet begun. 



THE FOKEST IN EARLY TIMES. 



In very early times the forest was preserved for the game it con- 

 tained. Forestry then meant the art of hunting, and had very little 

 to do with the care of trees. Even the word "forest," which really 

 comes from the Latin /oris, meaning out-of-doors, was thought in 

 England to be derived from the fact that it was a place given up to 

 wild animals /or" rest. But gradually the forest came to be considered 

 more than the game, and the serious study of forestry began. 



MODERN FORESTRY. 



Forestry as a science is of comparatively recent origin, although a 

 work in which all the European trees are described was one of the 

 earliest printed books. Until the end of the eighteenth century for- 

 estry was discussed chiefly by men who were either scholars or prac- 

 tical woodsmen, but who were not both. Then appeared Hartig 

 and Cotta, two men who united these points of view, and their writ- 

 ings are at the base of the whole modern growth of the subject. 

 Both Were German. Each covered the whole field as it was then 

 understood, and together they exerted an influence which has not 

 been approached by any other authors since. From Germany their 

 teaching spread to France, and early in the nineteenth century their 

 doctrines were introduced into the French Forest School at Nancy 

 by Lorentz, who, with his successor. Parade, was the founder of 

 modern forestry in France. 



Under the feudal system, which was finally destroyed in France 

 by the revolution of 1789, the forest was the property of the feudal 



358 



