FOREST POLICIES OF FOREIGN NATIONS. 313 



in different districts. A direct state control of 

 some kind is exercised over only 29.7 per cent 

 of the private forest, mostly in southern and mid- 

 dle Germany, while 70.3 per cent of the private 

 property is entirely without control. 



As far as the large land-owners are concerned, 

 this has mostly been of no detriment, as they are 

 usually taking advantage of rational management ; 

 but the small peasant holdings show the bad effects 

 of this liberty quite frequently in the devasted 

 condition of the woods and waste places. As a 

 competent writer puts it : " The freedom of private 

 forest ownership has led in Prussia not only to 

 forest dismemberment and devastation, but often 

 to change of forest into field. On good soils the 

 result is something permanently better ; on medium 

 and poor soils the result has been that agriculture, 

 after the fertility stored up by the forest has been 

 exhausted, has become unprofitable. These soils 

 are now utterly ruined and must be reforested as 

 waste lands." 



Need, avarice, speculation, and penury were 

 developed into forest destruction when in the be- 

 ginning of this century the individualistic theories 

 led to an abandonment of the control hitherto 

 existing, and it was found out that the principle so 

 salutary in agriculture and other industries was a 

 fatal error in forestry. 



According to the character of state control, the 

 entire forest area may be classified as follows : — 



