12 



La Sologne. in the central part of the conntry between the rivers 

 Loire and Cher, was once densely wooded, but was for two centuries 

 steadily deforested. By the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 1,250,000 acres had been utterly abandoned. Owing to the nature 

 of the soil and subsoil, drainage was necessary as a first step toward 

 reclaiming this land with forest. About the middle of the nineteenth 

 century a committee of private citizens, under the presidency of the 

 director-general of forests, began the work of reclamation. A canal 

 25 miles long and 350 miles of roads were built, and 200,000 acres of 

 nonagricultural land were planted with pine. In spite of the fact 

 that one of the species planted proved a failure and another kind of 

 pine had to be substituted, the reforestation work has resulted in a 

 forest property worth $18,000,000, and land which could be bought 

 for $4 an acre fifty years ago is now yielding $3 an acre net annual 

 revenue. 



The arid limestone wastes of the province of Champagne have been 

 partly reclaimed by forest planting. Two hundred thousand acres, 

 planted at a cost of $10 per acre, have now risen in value from $4 to 

 $40 per acre, with a total value of $10,000,000 and a net annual rev- 

 enue of $2 per acre. 



The private forests of France are being freely sold. Speculators 

 buy them, strip them, and sell them for grazing purposes. In this 

 way hilltops and hillsides are being rapidly denuded. This threatens 

 erosion and the silting of farm lands in the valleys by the washing 

 down of infertile soil. The terribly destructive floods of the present 

 year could not have been so violent had the liills of France been kept 

 clothed in forest. 



In France, then, forestry has decreased the danger from floods, 

 which threatened to destro3^ vast areas of fertile fanns, and in doing 

 so has added many millions of dollars to the National wealth in new 

 forests. It has removed the danger from sand dunes; and in their 

 place has created a property worth many millions of dollars. Ap- 

 plied to the State forests, which are small in comparison with the 

 National Forests of this country, it causes them to yield each year a 

 net revenue of more than $4,700,000, though the sum spent on each 

 acre for management is over 100 times greater than that spent on 

 the forests of the United States. 



France and Germany together have a population of 100,000,000, in 

 round numbers, against our probable 85,000,000, and State forests of 

 14,500,000 acres against our 160,000,000 acres of National Forests; but 

 France and Germany spend on their forests $11,000,000 a year and 

 get from them in net returns $30,000,000 a year, while the United 

 States spent on the National Forests last year $1,400,000 and secured 

 a net return of less than $130,000. 



[Cir. 140] 



