Greece. 279 
to gather dry wood for fuel is an incentive for making 
dry wood by setting fires, which also serve to improve 
the pasture; perhaps nowhere are forest fires more fre- 
quent, in spite of heavy penalties. That a baneful in- 
fluence on the water condition and river flow has been 
the result is historically demonstrated by Chloros*. 
In the mountains some fine and quite extensive 
bodies of fir still exist, lack of transportation having 
preserved them. Elsewhere the rights of user, and the 
herding of goats are so well established that reforms 
appear, indeed, difficult. 
Firewood, 3 loads for each person, supposed to be 
taken from the dead or otherwise useless trees, and small 
dimension material is free to all. For the right to cut 
workwood, the government charges a tax of 25 to 30 per 
cent. of the value of the material, the price for this being 
annually determined. On the material cut in private 
forests, the government also levies a tax of from 12 to 
18 per cent. of its value. This pernicious system of 
promiscuous cutting leads to the most wasteful use 
imaginable, not only high stumps, but large amounts of 
good material are left in the woods so that it is estimated 
that hardly 50 per cent. of what is cut is really utilized. 
The cut, as far as the tax gives a clue to it, amounts to 
round 2.7 million cubic feet workwood, but with the fire- 
wood included it was estimated that near 90 million 
cubic feet are cut annually. Importation to the amount 
of 1.5 million dollars, mostly from Austria and Roumania, 
makes up the deficit in work material, especially for the 
box factories which manufacture the packages for the 
*See Allgemeine Forst-und Jagdzeitung, 1884, p. 183 ff.,and 1887, p, 327 ff. 
for interesting details. 
