102 Germany. 
A reaction from the indiscriminate application of the 
shelterwood method to the hardwoods and of the clearing 
method to the pine set in during the last quarter of the 
19th century under the lead of Burkhardt and Gayer. 
These advocated return to mixed forest and to natural 
regeneration with long periods, approaching a selection 
forest. Yet even to this day, the principles of silvicul- 
tural treatment under the many different conditions re- 
main unsettled. On the whole, however, the financial 
question having been assiduously brought forward, the 
clearing system has made much progress and the selec- 
tion system has nearly vanished, being replaced by the 
group method and the shelterwood system. 
A number of special forms of silvicultural manage- 
ment applicable under special conditions have been 
locally developed, without, however, gaining much 
ground and being mainly of historical value. Among 
these may be mentioned Seebach’s Modified Beech For- 
est, which consists in first securing a regeneration, 
merely to form a soil cover, and in leaving enough of the 
old trees on the ground to close up in thirty or forty 
years. By this treatment the large accretion due to 
open position is secured without endangering the soil. 
Similarly the Composition or Two-aged High forest, was 
applied to the management of oak forest in mixture with 
beech. In a few localities also, on limited areas, a com- 
bination of forest and farming (Waldfeldbau) has been 
continued and elaborated, besides the more general use 
of coppice and coppice with standards. 
According to the statistics for 1900 the following dis- 
tribution of the acreage under different silvicultural 
methods prevailed throughout the empire: 
