erwise these ships might have to go in bal- 
last. Therefore, the maritime pine can be 
landed at the English mines cheaper than can 
mine props from near-by English forests. 
During the war the maritime pine forests 
played a very large part in supplying timber 
and wood of various sorts needed at the front. 
One of the important centers of American 
Forest Engineers in France during the war 
was near Mimizan, in the Landes. Woolsey 
says that 41.4 million board feet were cut in 
their operations. 
THE TURPENTINE 
INDUSTRY 
But the value of the maritime pine does 
not rest aione in its wood. The production 
of resin is even more important. Indeed 
these forests are managed primarily for the 
yield of turpentine and secondarily for their 
timber. Especially is this true of the pri- 
vately owned portions, which as a rule occupy 
the more productive soils. In some of the 
forests of this class two-thirds of the income 
is derived from resin. 
This letter would have to be much longer 
than space permits to describe the turpentine 
operations in the maritime pine forests of 
France. Those who are interested can find 
full information, in detail, in Chapter 8 of 
Major Woolsey’s “Studies in French Fores- 
try’, to which reference has already been 
Made, more than once. But very briefly it 
may be said that the method in use differs 
mainly from the American method in that 
much narrower faces are cut than with us 
and that the cut is not as deep. The width 
of face in France is 3.5 inches. There are 
also differences in the way in which the face 
is increased in height. 
The procedure in the management of these 
forests is in general somewhat as follows: 
Following the regeneration of a stand clean- 
ings and thinnings are made at five year in- 
tervals until at 25 years there should be 
about’°200 trees per acre. Pruning is also 
done, the branches being removed up to 10 or 
12 feet above the ground. At about 25 years 
tapping of the trees begins to be combined 
with thinning; those that are to be removed 
being the first to be tapped. ‘Permanent’ 
trees are not tanped till they are 13 inches in 
diameter. 
There are two classes of tapped trees: 
Those where the object is to tap without 
killing the tree (Gemmage a vie) and those 
that are being tapped to death (Gemmage a 
mort). The smaller sized trees that are to 
be removed in the thinnings, but which are 
large enough to yield turpentine, may at once 
be tapped tc death, but more often they are 
first tapped without killing for a time, be- 
fore they are subjected to gemmage a mort. 
When the permanent trees are large enough 
to tap (13 inches, diameter breast high is 
e@ minimum) a face is started near the 
oot swelling, which is extended upward in 
subsequent seasons. The method now is to 
work one face four years, when its top will 
be at a height between-9 and 10 feet. As the 
tree increases in size additional faces are cut, 
but only as may be designated by the local 
forester. The rotation on state owned for- 
ests is usually 70 to 75 years. It will thus 
be seen that on mature trees, there may in 
the end have been ten or a dozen faces, each 
worked for four years. Finally the tree is 
tapped to death and then cut for its timber. 
As to yield, Woolsey (p. 202) quotes De 
Lapasse as follows: ‘‘One might say that 166 
pines can yield annually a barrel of resin, but 
in order to collect 100 quarts it is necessary 
to have 50 pines tapped alive, each tree pro- 
ducing an average of two quarts. In the 
thinnings, 1000 trees tapped to death may 
yield, according to the size of the trees, from 
4 to 6 barrels of 340 quarts each. In this 
case 59 pines tapped to death are necessary 
to obtain 100 quarts of resin. In the regen- 
eration felling, with pine 67 to 70 years old 
with four faces each, each face can produce 
one and one-half or six quarts per tree. An 
acre stocked on an average with 80 trees will 
yield about 480 quarts of resin per year’’. 
With the fixation of the dunes and the es- 
tablishment of the forest went also the 
draining of the wet areas that in old times 
were the breeding places of disease. Today 
apart from their economic assets in forest 
products, the departments of Gironde and the 
Landes have many health and tourist resorts. 
Arcachon is a case in point. But all along 
the coast, the combination of a wonderful 
beach with the forest close at hand behind, 
had led to the creation of many summer col- 
onies, that range from simple hamlets of a 
few cottages up to elaborate and fashionable 
vacation towns. 
THE 
CONCLUSION 
The writer of this letter has no desire to 
moralize, but it is impossible to visit the 
southwest of France and not be impressed 
with what has been accomplished there in the 
past century. 
The big, outstanding feature about it all 
is that here was a great section of worthless 
land, where the conditions of life for the few 
People who did manage to hold on were 
steadily going from bad to worse, that 
through the agencies of human skill and per- 
severance has been absolutely transformed 
into perhaps the most prosperous part of 
France. 
In America we do not have, fortunately, 
anything quite like what the Landes was a 
century and a half ago. Our problems are 
different but nevertheless comparable, for we 
do have areas, once covered with forest but 
now merely waste places; that can be restored 
to productivity only by the replacement of 
the forest. The French did not find their task 
an easy one. Neither, probably, shall we. 
But it is a task that sometime we have got 
to tackle. A good starting point would be 
some of the barrens in what used to be the 
white pine belt of the lake states. 
(62) 
