is no need for years of experiment Avith untried theories. The forest 

 principles which hundreds of years of ,actual practice have proved 

 right are at its command. The only question is, how should these be 

 modified or extended to best meet American conditions. In the man- 

 agement of the National Forests the Government is not working in 

 the dark. Nor is it slavishly copying European countries. It it put- 

 ting into practice, in America, and for Americans, principles tried 

 and found correct, which will insure to all the people alike the fullest 

 and best use of all forest resources. 



In the following short history of what forestry has done in other 

 countries, it will be possible to give only the chief facts. Yet even 

 in this incomplete review two things stand out with striking clearness. 

 One is that those countries which have gone farthest in the practice 

 of forestry are the ones which to-day are most^ prosperous, which 

 have the least proportion of waste land, and which have the most 

 promising futures. The other is that those countries which spend 

 most upon their forests receive from them the greatest net returns. 



GERMANY. 



The German Empire has nearly 35,000,000 acres of forest, of which 

 31.9 per cent belongs to the State, 1.8 per cent to the Crown, 16.1 per 

 cent to communities, 46.5 per cent to private persons, 1.6 per cent to 

 corporations, and the remainder to institutions and associations. 

 There is a little over three-fifths of an acre of forest for each citizen, 

 and though 53 cubic feet of wood to the acre is produced in a year, 

 wood imports have increasingly exceeded wood exports for over fortj^ 

 years, and 300,000,000 cubic feet, valued at $80,00(5,000, or over one- 

 sixth of the home consumption is now imported each year. Ger- 

 many's drains on foreign countries are in the following order: Aus- 

 tria-Hungary, 19,750,000 tons; Russia- and Finland, 18,000,000 tons; 

 Sweden, 508,000 tons; the United States, 360,000 tons; Norway, 49,000 

 tons.*^ 



German forestry is remarkable in three ways. It has always led 

 in scientific thoroughness, and now it is working out results with an 

 exactness almost equal to that of the laboratory; it has applied this 

 scientific knowledge with the greatest technical success; and it has 

 solved the problem of securing through a long series of years an in- 

 creasing forest output and increasing profits at the same time. 



Like other advanced European countries, Germany felt? the pinch 

 of wood shortage a hundred and fifty years ago, and though this 

 shortage was relieved by the coming of the railroads, which opened 

 up new forests, and by the use of coal, which substituted a new fuel 



^According to the kind of wood, a ton is equivalent to from about 500 to about 

 1,000 board feet. 



[Cir. 140] 



