10 IMPRESSIONS OF FRENCH FORESTRY 



ments and activities have centered around and grown upon a core of 

 publicly owned forests. These national and community holdings fit- 

 tingly express the forestry sense, or instinct, of the French people. Their 

 extension, their standards of administration, their educational influence, 

 the technical service entrusted with their care — these have been first 

 and last the greatest supports of forestry development in France. Yet 

 their history has not been one of smooth, uninterrupted progress. In 

 certain chapters it reminds us strikingly of the history of the public 

 domain in the United States. 



Checkered History of the State Forests of France. — The first effect 

 of the French Revolution was toward the nationalization of the forests 

 of the country. The royal domains, largely forested, were declared to be 

 the property of the State. A law of 1789, placing church property at the 

 disposition of the nation, added more forests to the public holdings. In 

 1792 the forests owned by emigres of the old nobiUty were confiscated. 

 Then a counter, individualistic movement, tending to break up national 

 control, set in. In the reaction against the abuses and usurpations of the 

 old seigneurs, and during the lax administration of the earUer revolu- 

 tionary period, the rural communes were encouraged to take possession of 

 the old royal, noble, or ecclesiastical forests under any sort of pretext 

 based upon entailed rights or old claims. Many properties of the fugitive 

 nobihty were restored to their former owners. Large areas of State 

 forests were sold outright under the individualistic economic theories of 

 the times. Every subsequent revolutionary overturn was followed by 

 fresh disposals of State timberland. Up to the beginning of the Third 

 Republic the attitude of the French toward their public domain was 

 similar at many points to that in the United States during the Nineteenth 

 Century. 



Under the Third Republic the policy of France has turned definitely in 

 the opposite direction. AHenations of national forests have been re- 

 stricted practically to minor adjustments of communal claims. On the 

 other hand, the State holdings have been enlarged steadily by plantations 

 in the sand dunes and by the purchase and reforestation of mountain 

 lands in connection with the protection of watersheds. Most important 

 of all, the forest code has placed pubUc forests of every kind, including 

 communal lands and the properties of public institutions, under a unified 

 public administration, by an expert service of exceptionally high technical 

 standards and practical ability. 



The Extent of the Public Forests. — These public forests now comprise 

 nearly 8,000,000 acres, about one-third of the forested area of France. 

 3,000,000 acres of this total are the property of the French nation, the 

 community forests together aggregating considerably more than the 

 holdings of the central government. 



