During the war, Dr. Schenck was in service 
in the German army. First in Poland, where 
he was badly wounded, then, after his recov- 
ery, he had to do with prisoners of war; and 
later, for a time, was in Belgium. He left the 
army in 1917, before America entered the 
war. After the Armistice he was in charge, 
until about six months ago, of relief work for 
children under the direction of a Quaker or- 
ganization having its headquarters in Phila- 
delphia. At present he is living at Linden- 
fels, near Darmstadt, Hesse, in which city he 
has his permanent home, 
It will be recalled that in the later years of 
the Biltmore Forest Academy, Dr. Schenck 
was in the habit of conducting his students 
both to certain of the European forests and 
also to various centers of the lumber industry 
in the United States. It was my good fortune 
to visit with him some of the forests that his 
peripatetic school used to frequent. I by no 
means saw all of the forests of Germany, and 
use as well and are removed from the forest, 
and (3) the permanent road system by which 
all parts of the forest are made accessible. It 
goes without saying that neither close utiliza- 
tion nor permanent reads would pay unless 
there were markets near at hand and a rela- 
tively dense population in close proximity to 
the forest. These things are functions one of 
the other. In Germany one has such condi- 
tions, with the result that it is possible profit- 
ably to practice extremely intensive manage- 
ment. These forests are interesting primarily 
as examples of what can be done in forest 
management where economic conditions war- 
rant highly intensive treatment. 
All the forests are of course under very 
definite and exact working plans. A revision 
of the plan is made every ten years and a 
grand revision each twenty years. The basic 
idea is that of sustained yield and care is tak- 
en not to exceed the allowed cut per annum. 
THESE OLD 
OAKS IN THE 
SPESSART 
ARE 270 
YEARS OLD— 
THE SMALL 
TREES 
BETWEEN 
BEECH 
ARE 
omitted Saxony altogether—a section noted 
for its spruce, managed with particular rela- 
tion to high financial returns—but I did see 
excellent examples of what may be regarded 
as the best forests of south Germany, and near 
Darmstadt I saw something of pine forests on 
sand plains, of the same type that character- 
izes the forests of Prussia. The areas visited 
were the Odenwald in Hesse, the Spessart in 
Bavaria, the city forest of Heidelberg, and in 
the Schwarzwald, the forest of Herrenwies, 
the Schénmiinzwald and the Schifferschaft- 
wald, in the states of Baden and Wiirttem- 
berg. 
SOME TYPICAL 
GERMAN FORESTS 
The outstanding features about all these 
forests, especially to the American visitor, are 
(1) the fully stocked stands of tall symetri- 
cal trees, (2) the absolutely complete utiliza- 
tion of every part of the tree, down to branch 
wood one inch and less in diameter, while 
often the smaller branches and twigs find a 
But the surprising thing is that notwithstand- 
ing all the prescriptions in the working plan 
and the faithful adherence to certain general 
rules, there is yet plenty of room for individ- 
ual initiative on the part of the forester. These 
German forests are by no means Managed by 
the exact methods set forth in the text books. 
Each forstmeister has the opportunity and the 
duty to modify the plan, within given limits. 
The result is that in forests of practically the 
same composition and of similar topography 
lying only a few miles apart, there may be 
very distinct differences in the way in which 
they are Managed. These distinctions may, it 
is true, be rather fine ones, but to the forester 
they are interesting subjects of study. The 
important point is that the German forester 
is not bound by any set rules in his manage- 
ment but must use good, common horse sense 
all the while to get the results desired and 
still to keep within the limits imposed by his 
working plan. ; 
The method of Management naturally ya- 
(38) 
