116 Germany. 



laws it is punished by a money fine more or less in pro- 

 portion to the value of the stolen material or the damage 

 suffered. This money fine may be transmuted iato 

 imprisonment or forest labor, but corporal punishment, 

 which stUl prevailed in the first decades of the century, 

 has been abolished. Wood stealing was very general and 

 rampant during the beginning of the century, but im- 

 provement in the condition of the country population 

 and in the number and personnel of the forest officers 

 since 1850 has now reduced it to a minimum. 



Formerly, and until 1848, the administrators and even 

 the forest owners acted at the same time as prose- 

 cutor, judge and executioner, and only in 1879 was this 

 condition everywhere and entirely changed and infrac- 

 tions against forest laws adjudged by regular courts of 

 law, holding meetings at stated times for the prosecu- 

 tion of such infractions. 



Nevertheless the court procedures in forest matters 

 still vary from the usual court practice, providing a 

 simpler, cheaper and more ready disposal of testi- 

 mony and witnesses, and quicker retribution, which is 

 largely rendered possible through having every forest 

 officer under oath as a sheriff, and his statement and per- 

 haps the confiscated tools employed in the theft, being 

 accepted as prima facie evidence of the infrax:tion. 



The social position of the underf oresters and the for- 

 est protective service has also been improved untU all 

 charges of incompetency and immorality which were 

 not undeserved even until past the middle of the 

 nineteenth century, have become reversed; the forest 

 service being morally on as high a plane as all the de- 

 partments of German administrations. 



