17 



forest land," in other words, land unfit for farming, must be refor- 

 ested within six years after it is cleared. Three- fourths of all the 

 forest land of Hungar}^, including pri^^ate as well as public forests, 

 falls under the classification of absolute forest land. Moreover, all 

 mountain forests are required to be managed under State working 

 plans. Two-thirds of aU the Hungarian forests are brought under 

 this sort of State supervision. Forest planting is encouraged by 

 State nurseries, at which 10,000,000 seedlings are raised every year 

 for free distribution, and by bounties paid for forest plantation 

 established on private waste lands. 



Hungary has some 600 square miles of shifting sands and waste 

 lands, like those of the Landes of France. The work of reclaiming 

 these was planned by the .law of 1788. Actual planting was begun 

 in 1817. By 1869, 20,000 acres had been forested, and parts of the 

 plantations were beginning to yield a profit. The work of reforest- 

 ing is constantly going on. 



NORWAY, SWEDEN, AND DENMARK. 



NORWAr. 



Only 21 per cent, or 20,000,000 acres, of Norway is in forest. 

 The State owns less than 2,000,000 acres of this. Of the forest 

 region one-half has to import timber, one- fourth has sufficient for 

 its needs, and one-fourth is able to export over 1,000,000 tons, 

 valued at $18,000,000 a year. Nearly two-thirds of the exports go to 

 England and most of the rest is divided up between Belgium, Aus- 

 tralia, France, Holland, Germany, and Denmark. The total annual 

 cut, one-fifth of which is exported, is about 500,000,000 cubic feet. It 

 exceeds by 1,500,000 cubic feet the amount of wood groAvn by all the 

 forest in the same time. In other words, the cut is far too heavy to 

 last, so that a reduction of wood exports is inevitable. 



Forestry is on a low level. The various provisions for the better 

 use and protection of the forests, which began three hundred years 

 ago, have been of too half-hearted a nature to meet the situation. 

 There is a forest service, but the officers are few and underpaid, and 

 the districts under their care — sometimes several million acres to 

 each — are far too large for effective work. Moreover, there are 

 difficulties over the forest rights which were earlier granted to en- 

 courage the development of the country, but which are now greatly 

 in the way of establishing property rights and organizing an admin- 

 istration. 



Since 1860 the State has been buying cut-over lands in order to 

 plant* them to forest where forest protection is needed, and from 

 $15,000 to $20,000 a year has been spent in this way during recent 

 years. 



[Cir. 140] 



