EUROPEAN FOREST POLICIES. 207 



has been also in progress a work of recuperation similar lo the French reboiserneut work, in which, 

 up to 1894, nearly $1,500,000 had been spent, the State contributing variously from 25 to 100 per 

 cent toward covering the expense. A fully organized forest department manages the Government 

 forests, 2,000,000 acres, which are gradually being increased by purchase, or 73 per cent of the 

 whole forest area. One higher, and several lower schools provide instruction. 



Some 150,000 acres of waste land were reforested by the State between 1881 and 1890. 



Even Eussia, although one of the export countries, with $30,000,000 to $35,000,000, and 

 largely in the pioneering stage, has a well devised forest policy, developed within the last thirty 

 or fifty years, which consists not only in maintaining Government forests to the extent of about 

 280,000,000 acres under tolerably good management, and 30,000,000 of Grown forests, personal 

 property of the royal family, but in restricting private owners from abuse of their property, where 

 the public welfare demands, while in the prairie country in southern Russia large amounts of 

 money are spent by the Government in planting forests and assisting private enterprise in the 

 same direction. 



With the Siberian forests and ^hose of the Caucasus added, the area of Government forest 

 may reach the large figure of 600,000,000 acres, which, though not yet all placed under manage 

 ment, is sooner or later to come under the existing forest administration. 



The restrictive policy datSs from a very elaborate law passed in 1888, in which the democratic 

 spirit in the constitution of the body controlling the exercise of property rights is interesting. 

 The approval of working plans or of clearings on private property is placed in the hands of a 

 specially constituted committee for each county, which includes the governor, justices of the 

 peace, the county council, and several forest owners, and the Government itself must secure the 

 approval of this committee for its operations. 



By this law, throughout European Eussia, woodlands may be declared " preserved forests" on 

 the following grounds : That they serve as preventives against the formation of barrens and 

 shifting sands, and the encroachment of dunes along seashores or the banks of navigable rivers, 

 canals, and artificial reservoirs 5 that they protect from sand drifts towns, villages, cultivated 

 land, roads, and the like; that they protect the banks of navigable rivers and canals from land- 

 slides, overflows, or injuries by the breaking up or passing of ice,* when growing on hills, steep 

 places, or declines, they serve to check land or rock slides, avalanches, and sudden freshets, 

 and all forests that protect the springs and sources of the rivers and their tributaries. 



In these preserved forests, working plans are made at the expense of the Government, and 

 in the unpreserved forests at the expense of the owners. In each province the Government 

 maintains an inspector-instructor, whose duty is to advise those who apply to him in forest 

 matters, and as far as possible he is to superintend on the spot all forestry work. The Government 

 has established nurseries from which private owners can obtain young trees and seeds at a low 

 price. The owners are allowed to employ as managers of their forests the trained officials of the 

 forest administration, while medals and prizes are given yearly to private owners for excellency 

 in forest culture and management. Two higher and thirteen lower schools of forestry are also 

 maintained by the Government. 



The country which has attracted most interest in all matters pertaining to forestry, because 

 the science of forestry is there most developed and most closely applied, is Germany. The policies 

 prevailing and methods employed are fully described in another part of this report. 



It may, however, be interesting to trace somewhat the historical development both of uhe 

 application of forestry principles and of the existing forest policy. 



Although as early as Ghailemagne's time a conception of the value of a forest as a piece of 

 property was well recognized by that monarch himself, and crude prescriptions as to the proper 

 use of the same are extant, a general really well-ordered system of forest management hardly 

 existed until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Sporadically, to be sure, systematic care 

 and regular methods of reproduction were employed even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centu- 

 ries. 



To understand the development of the present forest policy in Germany one must study the 

 peculiar conditions and development of property rights that led to it. Germany was originally 

 settled by warriors, who had to keep together in order to resist enemies and conquerors on every 



