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Private forests are under Government supervision. ^¥here they 

 protect mountain slopes they can not be cleared without permission, 

 but must be handled so as to keep the forest cover intact. 



The Japanese forests are administered in many ways like our own. 

 The personnel is made up of trained men. Up to recent years 

 Japanese students of forestry, had to be educated abroad. Now, 

 however, they may receive thorough instruction in their own country. 



ITALY. 



Italy has some 10,000,000 acres of forest, nearly 15 per cent of the 

 land area, and one-third of an acre for each inhabitant. The State 

 owns only 4 per cent of this; communal forests cover 43 per cent, 

 and private forests 53 per cent. Wood valued at $14,000,000 (420,000 

 tons) is imported every year, and wood importations have doubled 

 in the last decade. 



Most of the forests of the country are exceedingly poor. Nearly 

 half of them are made up of coppice woods or young stump shoots, 

 which yield but little besides the small wood used for fuel and char- 

 coal. Eighty per cent of the wood produced at home is small wood 

 of this character. Wherever timber of good size is within reach the 

 forest has been devastated. Indeed, existing forests are so far gone 

 that much time and outlay will be necessary to increase their produc- 

 tiveness. 



Italy has suffered extremely from the ruin which follows the re- 

 moval of protective forests. One-third of all the land is unpro- 

 ductive, and though some of this area may be made to support forest 

 growth, one-fourth of it is beyond reclamation, mainly as the result 

 of cleared hillsides and the pasturing of goats. The rivers are dry 

 in summer; in spring they are wild torrents, and the floods, brown 

 with the soil of the hillsides, bury the fertile lowland fields. The 

 hills are scored where the rains have loosened the soil, and landslides 

 have left exposed the sterile rocks, on which no vegetation finds a 

 foothold. Such floods as that of 1897, near Bologna, which did over 

 $1,000,000 damage, destroy property and life. 



The dearth of wood and especially the great need of protection 

 forests to control stream flow have brought some excellent forest laws. 

 In spite of the first general forest law (1877), which regulated cut- 

 ting and forbade clearing on mountain slopes, large areas have per- 

 sistently been cleared, and though provision has been made for 

 thorough reforesting work, very little of the needed planting has been 

 done. The classification of the lands to which restrictions shall and 

 shall not apply is a constant matter of dispute. An effort has been 

 made to show that the forest planting contemplated by law is largely 

 unnecessary. The last point, however, has been safely settled by 



[Cir. 140] 



