304 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



The present century has been occupied with the 

 difficult labor of relieving this state of things and 

 making equitable arrangements by which the for- 

 ests become unencumbered and the beneficiaries 

 properly satisfied by cession of land or a money 

 equivalent. 



This chapter of the history of forest policy is 

 especially interesting to us, as a tendency, nay the 

 practice, exists of granting such right to the public 

 timber to the settlers in the western states, which 

 by and by will be just as difficult to eradicate when 

 rational forest management is to be inaugurated. 



Over 5,000,000 marks and several hundred acres 

 of land were required in the little kingdom of 

 Saxony to get rid of the servitudes in the state 

 forests. The Prussian budget contains still an 

 item of 1,000,000 marks annually for this purpose ; 

 and although over 22,000,000 marks and nearly 

 20,000 acres of land have been spent for this pur- 

 pose in Bavaria, the state forests there are still 

 most heavily burdened with servitudes. 



The doctrine of the regal right to the chase, as 

 we have seen, led to the gradual assertion of all 

 property rights to the forest itself, or at least to 

 the exclusive control of its use. This right found 

 expression in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 

 in a legion of forest ordinances, aiming at the 

 conservation and improvement of forest areas, 

 and abounding in detailed technical precepts. 



At first, treating the, private interest with some 



