38 THE FORESTS OF FRANCE. 



are disappearing before the face of the white man. To 

 many the whole of these changes seem unaccountable ; but 

 there they are ; it is the fact which is here brought under 

 attention, and viewed in the light of the destruction of 

 forests going on in our own day. 



It may be, and probably it is the case, that the white 

 man is only acting as did the black man before him, and 

 as his own fathers did in bygone times in the land whence 

 he has emigrated, cutting down such trees as served his 

 purpose, as they cut down trees which served their pur- 

 pose. But either from the operations of the white man 

 being more extensive than were those of the men by whom 

 he was preceded as occupants of the land, or from the 

 circumstances of his operations being carried on in our 

 own day, so that we see the work done, and the effects 

 which follow, without any such foreshortening as prevents 

 this being done in the consideration of the past, or, it may 

 be froiQ a combination of both of these facts, the work of 

 destruction is seen now to go on with effects which dispose 

 ns to cry : Hold ! Woodman, spare that tree ! and to urge 

 upon all our Colonial Governments to stay the work of 

 destruction till it can be shown to what the present system 

 of forest management must lead, and how, by a more excel- 

 lent way, there may be obtained from their forests a 

 sustained production combined with a natural reproduction 

 and improvement of these, so that without present loss 

 they may be handed down to coming generations undi- 

 minished, and enhanced in value if not in extent. 



Detailed information in regard to this system of exploi- 

 tation and its former application to the management of 

 forests in France, is supplied by the works of Baudredarf 

 and subsequent writers; and in regard to the effects of it 

 on forests in which it is, from necessity, or a supposed 

 necessity, still practised, M.M. Lorentz and Parade, fathers of 

 the School of Forestry in Nancy, wrote years ago : 



' Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, if not 

 before, it was found necessary to adopt legislative measures 



