CHAPTER XXII 

 FORESTRY AND FOREST MANAGEMENT 



358. Meaning of Forestry. — A generation ago " for- 

 estry " would have been considere'd, by people of the Western 

 Hemisphere at least, as synonymous with lumbering, which 

 concerns itself with the problem of how best to get the 

 products of the forest into the market in the form of lumber. 

 During recent years, however, forestry has come to be 

 thought of as primarily concerned with the ways and means 

 of raising repeated crops of forest trees on land that may not 

 be suitable for the growing of ordinary farm crops ; and, as 

 we shall learn, there are many problems other than that of 

 the mere growing of timber which must be considered in con- 

 nection with forestrjr. 



359. History of Forestry. — Switzerland and Germany 

 were the first countries that seriously undertook to control 

 the cutting and replanting of forest areas. The city of 

 Zurich, as early as the year 853, took over the supervision of a 

 forest area, and since the middle of the fourteenth century 

 this area has been cut and the products have been handled 

 by a city commission. Large tracts in Germany have been 

 well cared for by cities and provinces since the thirteenth 

 century, and in that country schools of forestry were early 

 established. During the French Revolution there was a 

 ruthless destruction of forests covering the more elevated 

 regions throughout France ; as a result, not only was there 

 soon a lack of timber, but the floods carried sand and gravel 

 from the exposed slopes on to the farm lands below. The 

 replanting of mountain slopes was undertaken by local com- 



342 



