I go 



FORESTRY IN ITALY. 



under regulations, whether they be public or private property, and only, when 

 requested, gives its advice as to the conditions of agreements for letting, or 

 the contracts for the sale of timber, limiting its authority to the preservation 

 and improvement of woods. Therefore, the replacing of decayed trunks and 

 the reoccupying of empty spaces are effected by fhe proprietors by artificial 

 means of planting and sowing, obtaining the seeds and the young plants from 

 the adjacent regions ; while for the reafforesting of great tracts of country 

 the proprietors usually request of the minister of agriculture, under the plea 

 of the encouragement of woodland culture, a gratuitous supply of seeds and 

 young plants from the government nurseries. 



There are not in this province any schools especially for the study of wood- 

 craft, but this study is encouraged in the chief agrarian college of Portici. 

 The college at Vallombrosa is under the supervision of the minister of agri- 

 culture, who directs the qualification of the students to be admitted and the 

 subjects of studies. 



I DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS. 



The decay of woods is deeply lamented, and the minister of agriculture 

 has, in the public interest, turned his attention to the promotion of reafforesta- 

 tion by bringing before the chamber of deputies a project for legislation. The 

 causes of the decay of forests in Italy are many and complex; but the chief of 

 all is the increase of population and the consequent necessity of increasing the 

 area of agrarian cultivation even in unfavorable places. Political changes 

 have rendered it easy for the population to profit by them, and destruction of 

 woods has followed on a vast scale; and on account of the scanty and ineffi- 

 cient forest laws hitherto existing, there was no possibility of restoring the 

 woods which had disappeared. And so, in consequence of the reckless and 

 ignorant tillage of naturally steep and mountainous districts, where good sense 

 would have taught men to increase the woodland vegetation, there followed 

 first an impoverished and meager soil, and by degrees the unsightly, miserable 

 barren rocks, of which the reclothing with woods is now an arduous and costly 

 undertaking. 



And even where the total and violent destruction of the woods had not come 

 to pass, it has been necessary by degrees to get rid of the privileges granted 

 and sanctioned by the previous forest laws, which left all woods of private 

 ownership free from administrative surveillance, so that the owners, partly 

 from carelessness and partly being obliged by their circumstances to let, cut 

 down woods out of season, and without leaving trees for the natural propaga- 

 tion of woodland growth, and, lastly, the inconsiderate feeding of goats, with 

 partial clearing, brought about the disappearance of large timber, whose place 

 was ill supplied by decaying, and stained, and spotted plants. And the effects 

 of this imprudence are met with in this province (not only) in the drying up 

 of water springs. In the Island of Capri, where more than elsewhere the 

 woods have been destroyed and replaced by vines, the scarcity of water is so 

 great as to necessitate the transportation of a regular supply from the main 

 land. It was also experienced in 1879 after heavy alluvial inundations, by 



