276 RECENT AFFORESTATION WORK IN FRANCE. [Dec. 1895. 



can be put. Of those, the most general are for pit-props and 

 vine-poles, for both of which there is a steady demand. He has 

 even been accustomed to plant trees in the ordinary rotation of 

 crops, knowing how richly his arable lands are benefited thereby, 

 and setting off his expenditure in planting, against what he 

 would otherwise be compelled to spend in manure. And while 

 it must be confessed that in his case, as in the case of the com- 

 munal forests above mentioned, the trees are cut not when 

 mature, but when they are most readily marketable, he yet 

 maintains in the interest of his own future requirements, as well 

 as in those of his successors, a fair proportion of woodland, which 

 he manages on a regular rotation system — that is, portions are 

 filled and renewed periodically. He is shrewd enough to know, 

 and he has the experience of years to teach him, what kind of 

 trees to plant, and where to plant them, and he can estimate the 

 value of his plantations, at various stages of their growth, with 

 as great, perhaps in these days with greater, certainty as any of 

 his agricultural crops. He knows, moreover, that nature has 

 herself established a balance between woodland and cultivated 

 land, whicii, neither in his own country nor in any other, can 

 be disturbed with impunity. 



Speaking generally, recent afforestation works by private 

 owners have been carried out in the wake, and as it were 

 under the lee, of the planting operations of the State. The 

 afforestation works of the State, for example, interposed a barrier 

 between the sea-boarded dunes and the inland country. Behind 

 this barrier have arisen the plantations and woods of the private 

 proprietors. In some instances, however, they liave been forced 

 into action on their own account. The price of wool has been 

 lowered, as a result of importation from Australia and elsewhere, 

 and lands whicii no longer pay as grazing grounds for sheep have 

 been covered with woods. But this is by no means a rash or 

 haphazard enterprise. The owner has seen by way of warning, 

 for example, much of the district of the Sologne planted with the 

 maritime pine, a tree which, however useful and valuable it is 

 further south, was thus taken out of its habitat, and proved 

 wholly unsuitable. And he has at his command geological and 

 other maps which give him not only the soils, but the zones of 

 the various trees, which he accordingly selects. His choice 

 between agriculture and forestry is therefore an easy, or at any 

 rate a clear, one. 



The initial action and the initial success of the Government in 

 afforestation matters have, as we have seen, interweaved the 

 interests of the State, the communes, the private proprietors, 

 and consequently the welfare of the rural population. There 

 remains to co insider, very briefly, joint action. It was not pos- 

 sible for the French Government to take in hand the works, 

 imperatively c:\lled for, necessary to mitigate all the damage 

 threatened by unrestrained rivers, whose sources had been laid 

 bare by reckless felling. And the combined efforts of the Govern- 



