4 IMPRESSIONS OF FRENCH FORESTRY 



age, imprisonment is obligatory, together with a fine of 3 francs for every 

 tree. 



While the admission of mitigating circumstances is forbidden, the 

 courts are compelled to impose severer penalties when a trespass is re- 

 peated within twelve months, when it is committed at night, or when 

 illegal cutting is done with the saw. In the last two cases the purpose 

 of the heavier punishment is to discourage trespasses under circumstances 

 which render them difficult of detection. The difficulties of the State 

 service in preventing unauthorized grazing on public forests and the 

 stress placed upon the protection of forest reproduction from injury by 

 grazing have led to exceptionally severe penalties for offenses of this char- 

 acter, involving obligatory imprisonment in most cases. The mere pres- 

 ence of sheep or cattle in a public forest is penalized and the stated fines 

 are doubled if the animals are discovered in woods under 10 years of age. 



Laws Dealing with Forest Fires. — The provisions of the forest code 

 dealing with fire are of special interest to Americans. Fires may not be 

 set for any purpose within 600 yards of a forest under pubHc administra- 

 tion except by land owners, or in the exercise of public franchises, or with 

 the permission of a forest officer. While the incendiary firing of cut tim- 

 ber is punished by imprisonment for limited periods, an incendiary fire in 

 a forest is pimishable by imprisonment at forced labor for Ufe, a distinc- 

 tion which well illustrates the French viewpoint toward forest conser- 

 vation. The forests of the Mediterranean provinces of France, which 

 experience a summer drought and fire hazard comparable to our South- 

 west, are placed under the protection of a special fire code. Surface 

 burning by land owners to destroy underbrush, a practice formerly com- 

 mon at the time of harvesting cork oak bark, is expressly forbidden. 

 Neither the owner of the land nor anyone else may set fires within 600 

 yards of any area of forest or brush land from June 1 to September 13 in 

 each year. The departmental governor alone may authorize the use of 

 fire within forest or brush lands for charcoal burning or other industrial 

 purposes. And any owner of forest or brush land in this region can com- 

 pel his neighbors to share the cost of a fire trench, or break, at the boun- 

 daries of adjoining holdings. These breaks must be from 60 to 150 feet 

 wide and kept clear of herbs, brush, and resinous trees. 



The forest penal code, which these examples illustrate, is more terrify- 

 ing on the statute books than in actual enforcement. This hardly could 

 be otherwise in view of the tact and diplomatic skill of French forest 

 officers and their effort to overcome local antagonisms to the forest 

 policies of the State. Nevertheless it is a striking expression of the 

 national instinct of forest conservation. 



State Control of Forest Devastation. — The same solicitude toward 

 forests as a resource requiring exceptional public safeguards is illustrated 



