Forestry Abroad and at Home 



377 



ered the whole field as it was then un- 

 derstood, and together they exerted an 

 influence which has not been approached 

 by any other authors since. From Ger- 

 many their teaching spread to France, 

 and early in the nineteenth century 

 their doctrines were introduced into the 

 French Forest School at Nancy by Lo- 

 rentz, who, with his successor, Parade, 

 was the founder of modern forestry in 

 France. 



Under the feudal system, which was 

 finall) 7 destroyed in France by the revo- 

 lution of 1789, the forest was the prop- 

 erty of the feudal lord. In order to 

 make the life of their serfs, who were 

 useful both as taxpayers and as fighting 

 men, easier, and so increase their num- 

 ber, he gave them the privilege of taking 

 from his forest the wood which they re- 

 quired. For similar reasons the wealthy 

 religious houses, like that of the Grande 

 Chartreuse, made grants of land and of 

 rights in the forest. But after a time 

 the number of peasants increased so 

 much that their wants absorbed nearly 

 the whole produce of the woodlands. 

 Then it was found necessary to limit 

 the prescriptive rights to forest product 

 by restricting them to certain parts of 

 the forest, or to make an end of them 

 by exchanging them for the absolute 

 ownership of smaller areas. Thus many 

 of the communities, to which, and not 

 to individual peasants, these rights be- 

 longed, came to possess forests of their 

 own. But the communes, as they were 

 called, managed their forests badly, and 

 about three hundred years ago the gov- 

 ernment was forced to intervene. Under 

 the management of officers of the gov- 

 ernment forest service the results from 

 the communal forests have been excel- 

 lent. At present these forests not only 

 supply fuel to the villages which own 

 them, but in some cases they produce 

 enough to pay all the village taxes as 

 well. 



GERMANY 

 Germany still holds the high position 



in forest science, which began with 

 Hartig and Cotta. The German forest 

 schools, of which there are seven of the 

 higher grades, are still among the very 

 best, and the study of forestry, both in 

 the schools and in the forest experiment 

 stations, is eagerly pursued. The for- 

 ests in Prussia, Saxony, and other Ger- 

 man states are admirably managed and 

 yield important returns. The total 

 value of the German forests, public and 

 private, is said to be about $4,500,000,- 

 000. 



FRANCE 



Forestry in France has long been 

 associated with the names of famous 

 men. Henry of Navarre and his friend 

 and minister, Sully ; Palissy, the great 

 potter, who called the neglect of the 

 forest prevalent in his time ' ' not a mis- 

 take, but a calamity and a curse for 

 France ; " Colbert, the minister of 

 Louis XIV ; the botanist Duhamel du 

 Monceau ; Buffon, the celebrated natu- 

 ralist, are among the men to whom 

 France owes the rise and progress of 

 her present excellent forest policy. 

 Their peculiar service was to lay the 

 foundation, both in law and in public 

 opinion, upon which modern forestry in 

 France now rests. 



The forests of the French govern- 

 ment are admirably managed. They 

 cover only about 2,750,000 acres, but 

 they yield a net return each year of 

 more than $2 per acre. Besides hand- 

 ling their natural forests with great in- 

 telligence and success, the French for- 

 esters have done much for the general 

 progress of forestry. They developed 

 the art of reforesting denuded moun- 

 tains, and were the first to plant trees 

 on moving sand dunes along the sea- 

 shore. More than 150,000 acres of 

 these dunes, which once were blown 

 about by the wind until they over- 

 whelmed great stretches of fertile 

 ground, and even threatened to bury 

 whole towns, are now covered with 

 forests of pine, which produce great 



