64 Germany. 
8. Methods of Regulating Forest Management. 
Organized forest management was slower to de- 
velop than silvicultural methods. The first attempts 
to bring order into the progress of fellings took the form 
of dividing the whole area into a certain number of fell- 
ing areas (12, 16, 20, 30, etc.), several ordinances con- 
taining prescriptions to that effect dating from the 
middle of the 15th and 17th centuries. 
It is doubtful whether the numbers of these areas 
indicate years of rotation, in which case they could only 
have applied to coppice, or whether they indicate periods 
of return in selection forest, although the historians seem 
to jump to the former conclusion. The area division 
practiced by v. Langen in the Harz mountains (1745), 
who prescribed the division of larger districts into fifty to 
sixty, of smaller districts into twenty to thirty felling 
areas, also leaves it doubtful, whether the areas corre- 
sponded to an assumed rotation or to a period of return. 
At first the division was not into equal areas, for no 
survey existed, and its object was simply to localize the 
cutting and provide orderly progress. The subdivision 
was made in the mountain country by following the 
topography, valleys and ridges, while in the plain the 
lines opened up for purposes of the chase (to set up 
nets), called Schneisen or Gestelle (rides), bounding 
square areas called Jagen, Quadrat, Stallung, were used 
for the limitation of the felling areas. Most commonly, 
however, largely due to absence of surveys, the ordered 
division did not materialize, but existed only on paper. 
With more exact measuring of-areas and with the con- 
ception of rotation or longer periods of return, it was 
recognized that the inequality of the sites or soil quality, 
