130 Germany. 
The discussion of what should be considered the 
proper felling age or rotation naturally occupied the 
minds of foresters from early times; a maximum volume 
production being originally the main aim. As early as 
1799, Seutter had recognized the fact that the culmina- 
tion of volume production had been obtained when the 
average accretion had culminated. MHartig, in 1808, 
made the distinction of a physical, an economic and a 
mercantilistic, i. e., financial felling age, and Pfeil, con- 
siderably ahead of his time is the first to call (1820) for 
a Totation based on maximum soil rent. As, however, 
he had so often done, he changed his mind, and while he 
first advocated even for the state a management for 
the highest interest on the soil capital involved, he later 
rejected such money management. About the same time 
Hundeshagen clearly pointed out the propriety and 
proper method of basing the rotation on profit calcula- 
tions, but it was reserved for a man not a forester to 
stir up the modern strife for the proper financial basis, 
namely Pressler, a professor of mathematics at Thar- 
and, who became a sharp critic of existing forest man- 
agement and developed to the extreme the net yield 
theories. 
It was then that the danger of a shortening of the ex- 
isting rotations, due to the apparent truth that long ro- 
tations were unprofitable, called for a division into the 
two camps alluded to; G. Heyer, Judeich and Lehr, elab- 
orating especially the mathematical methods of the soil 
rent theory, Krafft and Wagener came to the assistance 
of Pressler, while Burkhardt, Bose, Baur, Borggreve, 
Dankelmann, Fischbach and others, pleaded for a differ- 
ent policy for the state at least, namely, the forest rent 
with the established rotations. 
