Financial Considerations. 111 
tions which have to take into consideration uncertain 
future developments, and were satisfied with producing 
a satisfactory balance, a surplus of income over expenses, 
no matter what interest rate on the capital involved in 
soil and forest growth that might represent. 
At the present time these financial propositions are 
still merely under heated discussion. 
In actual practice the various state forest administra- 
tions, with the exception of the Saxon one, continue to 
‘rely upon the older methods in regulating the manage- 
ment of their forest properties without reference to 
financial theories. This is largely due to momentum 
of the practical existence and application of these 
methods in earlier times and the difficulty and impracti- 
cability of a change. In Prussia the instructions of 
Hartig were improved upon by his successor, Oberland- 
forstmeister von Reuss (1836), and these instructions 
form the basis of the work of forest regulation to-day. 
It is a periodic area allotment with only a summary 
check by volume. The working plan is only to secure a 
rational location and gradation of age classes; the cal- 
culations of yields and specific rules of management are 
confined to the first period and are revised every six 
years. ? 
In Saxony Cotta’s area method was systematically 
developed, and, as the larger part of Saxon forests is 
coniferous, mainly spruce, the proper location of age 
classes forms a special consideration for the progress of 
fellings. The determination of volume and increment 
was left to estimates, and the area division became en- 
tirely superior. The original idea of Cotta that orderly 
procedure in the management is of more importance 
