Variety of Forest Control. 149 
the country in the 15th century declared all forests 
national property, reserved for shiptimber, and placed 
them under management. They instituted a forest 
service, regulated pasturing and forbade clearing. The 
oak coppice was to be cut in 8 to 12 year rotation, with 
standards to be left for timber, etc. A reorganization of 
this service with division into districts is recorded in 
the 16th century, but the district officers, capitani ai 
boschi, being underpaid, carried on a nefarious trade on 
their own account and by 1775 the whole country was 
already ruined in spite of attempts at reform; the 
“Karst” problem remained unsolved; and when Aus- 
tria secured Dalmatia in 1897 that country too was 
found in the same deplorable condition, the forest area, 
there in the hands of the peasants, having suffered by 
pasture and indiscriminate cutting. 
It was the work of Maria Theresa to reform the ad- 
ministration of the various branches of government and 
wholesome legislation was also extended to the forest 
branch by her forest ordinance of 1754, which remained 
in force until 1852. It relieved the private owners, who 
held most of the forest area, from the restrictions hith- 
erto imposed, except in the frontier forests. These, for 
strategic reasons, were to be managed according to 
special working plans prepared by the “patriotic econo- 
mic society.” The management of communal forests 
also was specially regulated. Otherwise the ordinance 
merely recommended in general terms orderly system 
and the stopping of abuses. 
In 1771 another forest ordinance proposed to extend 
the same policy of private unrestricted ownership to 
the Karst forests, with the idea that thereby better 
