294 Italy. 
million plants and over 500 pounds of seed, and furnish- 
ing advice free of charge. 
In 1897, again a commission was instituted to formu- 
late new legislation. This commission reported in 1902, 
declaring that all accessible forests were more or less 
devastated, accentuating the needs of water management, 
and proposing a more rigorous definition of ban forests, 
a strict supervision of communal forests, and the man- 
agement of private properties under working plans by 
accredited foresters or else under direct control of the 
forest department, the foresters to be paid by the State, 
which is to recover from the owners. 
It is to be noted that Italy is perhaps the only coun- 
try where forest influence on health conditions was 
legally recognized, by the laws of 1877 and 1888. The 
belief that deforestation of the maremnae, the marshy 
lowlands betweeen Pisa and Naples, had produced the 
malarial fever which is rampant here, led the Trappist 
monks of the cloister at Tre Fontane to make planta- 
tions of Eucalyptus (84,000) beginning in 1870, the 
State assisting by cessions of land for the purpose. A 
commission, appointed to investigate the results, in 
1881, threw doubt on the effectiveness of the plantation, 
finding the observed change in health conditions due 
to improvement of drainage; and lately the mosquito 
has been recognized as the main agency in propagating 
the fever. The new propositions did not any more 
recognize this claimed influence as a reason for public 
intervention. Nevertheless, to two Italians is due the 
credit of having found the true cause of salubriousness 
of forest air, namely in the absence of pathogenic bac- 
teria. 
