La Sologne, in the central part of the country 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 revenue 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 hills of France been kept clothed in forest.

In France, then, forestry has decreased the danger from floods, which threatened to destroy vast areas of fertile farms, 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. Applied 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.

SWITZERLAND.

In Switzerland, which has 2,000,000 acres, or 20.6 per cent of its area, in forest, the communal forests are the largest, and make up 67 per cent of the total; the cantons own 4.5 per cent; and private persons own 28.6 per cent. The communal holdings are constantly growing by the purchase of private lands. The general government, or Bund, owns no forests. From $6,000,000 to $8,000,000 worth of wood (300,000 tons) and wooden ware are annually imported. This comes mainly from Austria-Hungary, southern Germany, and France.

The State forests yield about 64 cubic feet per acre, the corporation forests 42 cubic feet; the average yield of both together is about 45 cubic feet. The average wood growth per acre has been estimated to be 50 cubic feet. In the State forests of Bern the figures show a growth of 50 cubic feet for the plateau country, 73 cubic feet for the middle country, and 75 cubic feet in the Jura. Wood prices, which are higher than in Germany, have been rising for forty years.

The expenditures in forest management vary greatly among the Cantons, ranging from $1.50 to $7 per acre.. The net annual returns range from $3 per acre in the forests where least is expended, to $8 or $9 per acre in the city forests, where most is expended.

Forest regulations came very early in Switzerland. The first forest ordinance of Bern was issued 600 years ago. The city forest of Zürich, famous as the Sihlwald, has been managed under a working plan since 1680, and is to-day one of the most perfectly managed and most profitable forests in the world. It yields, on the average, a clear annual profit of $12 an acre. From time to time, as the evidence shows, the Swiss people stood in dread of a timber famine. Ordinances were passed forbidding the reduction of the forest area, the making of clearings, and the exportation of wood from one Canton to another. In the middle of the eighteenth century, as modern industrial life began, various Cantons sought to follow the examples which Bern and Zürich had set in forestry. A severe flood in 1830 brought home the need of more vigorous measures in guarding against torrents. The floods of 1834 and 1868 further enforced the lesson. An investigation of Swiss forest conditions was ordered by the Bund in 1857, and the same year provision was made for an annual appropriation of $2,000 to the Swiss Forestry Association for engineering and reforesting work in the Alps. In 1871 the Bundesrath was empowered to carry on this work, with an annual appropriation of $20,000. After the flood of 1868 $200,000 of the collections made for the relief of the sufferers was devoted to reforestation. In 1876 the Bund assumed supervision of the water and forest police in the High Alps above a certain elevation, and undertook to

give aid in the work of engineering and reforesting for the control of the Alpine torrents. Since 1898 the Bund has supervised all this work, and in 1902 the present forest policy was firmly fixed by a revision of the existing law.

All the Swiss forests comprised in the Bund are now classified as protection and nonprotection forests. Whether public or private they are all controlled by the government. In protection forests all cuttings must be such as to preserve the protective value of the forest cover intact, and for this reason clean cutting is usually forbidden. In such forests stumpage sales are forbidden, and all wood must be felled and measured under the direction of a forest officer. Otherwise, privately-owned protection forests are supervised in the main as are those publicly owned. Nonprotection forests are also subject to a number of regulations. When they are in private hands clearings may be made only with consent of the Canton, logged areas must be reforested within three years, and existing forest pastures must be maintained.

Where protection forests can be created by planting, this may be ordered, and where forests are converted to farming land or pasture an equal area may be ordered reforested. Where barren ground is required to be forested for protective purposes, the Bund assists by paying from 30 to 50 per cent of the cost. Between 1876 and 1902 16,000 acres were reforested at a cost of $1,000,000, in round numbers, the Bund having paid one-half.

Grazing has been regulated for centuries. In protection forests it is entirely prohibited; but on all the rest of the forests great success has attended the efforts of the forest service to safeguard both pasturage and the forest by supervision and range improvement. Despite differences in local conditions, the experience of Switzerland in forest grazing is, therefore, strongly in support of the policies which are directing the efforts of our own Forest Service. Indeed, the experience of all Europe shows the necessity of controlling the public range.

To sum up, forestry in Switzerland, where every foot of agricultural land is of the greatest value, has made it possible for the people to farm all land fit for crops, and so has assisted the country to support a larger population, and one that is more prosperous, than would be the case if the valleys were subjected to destructive floods. In a country as small as Switzerland, and one which contains so many high and rugged mountains, this is a service the benefits of which can not be measured in dollars. It is in Switzerland also, in the Sihlwald, that forestry demonstrates beyond contradiction how great a yield in wood and money it may bring about if applied consistently for a number of years.

AUSTRIA AND HUNGARY.

AUSTRIA.

In Austria, which has been independent of the German Federation only since 1866, forestry has, in the main, followed German lines. Austria-Hungary is one of the largest exporters of wood, and the yearly exportations reach 3,670,000 tons. Germaný takes more than half of these exports and the rest is distributed to Italy, Russia, and Switzerland.

Austria has 24,000,000 acres of forest, of which only 7 per cent belongs to the State and 58 per cent is private land. Communal and entailed forests make up the remainder. Of the private forests 34 per cent is in estates ranging from 20,000 to 350,000 acres in area, and for the last fifty years at least 75 per cent of the total forest area has been held in large, compact bodies. These large blocks are naturally favorable to forest management. Private forestry is further encouraged by the system of forest taxation, which relieves forests in which forestry is practiced. In the United States there are many enormous private forest holdings on which forestry would unquestionably be practiced were it not that excessive or ill devised forest taxation effectually discourages it.

The total net revenue from the Austrian State forests is over $5,000,000. The net yearly revenue per acre of 21 cents is comparatively low, due mainly to the facts that only 56 cents per acre is expended upon the forest and that most of the area is located in the rugged Alps and Carpathians, where administration and logging are costly.

The present forest department was started in 1872 in response to a popular outcry against the policy of selling State lands. That policy resulted in reducing the area of State forests from 10,000,000 to a little over 7,000,000 acres during the first half of the nineteenth century. The administration was reorganized in 1904, and now has three departments-administration proper, reforestation and the correction of torrents, and forest protection.

Forestry is successfully practiced on 60 per cent of all the Austrian forests and on 82 per cent of the private forests, and excellent results have been secured by cooperation between the State and private persons in forest management, particularly under the law of 1883. The most conspicuous fruit of Austrian forestry, however, is the reforesting of the "Karst." The Karst was a stretch of barren lands in the hilly country of Istria, Trieste, Dalmatia, Montenegro, and neighboring territory along the shores of the Adriatic Sea. It comprised some 600,000 acres. For centuries it had furnished the ship timbers and other wood supplies of Venice, but excessive cutting, together with burning and pasturing, the evil results of clearing, and the natural

condition of the land, had left it a waste almost beyond recovery. Many laws had been passed from time to time to stop the forest havoc, but without real effect till 1865. In that year the Government, persuaded by the forestry association, began to offer help to landowners who would undertake forest planting. Taxes were remitted for periods of years, technical advice was given, and plant material as well as money was supplied. Further laws were found necessary in 1882 and 1887 to meet the objections of stockmen. At the present time over 400,000 acres, or two-thirds of the Karst, have been brought under forest, in part by planting, at a cost of from $8 to $10 an acre, in part by protection and the natural recuperation so made possible.

This work has been carried on under the direction of the "forest protective service," which was first created for Tyrol in 1856 as a result of floods in the Tyrolese Alps in 1851 and was later (18711874) extended to the rest of the Empire. This service, which is distinct from the State forest administration, has also been especially helpful in encouraging private forestry. Though at first regarded with hostility, it is now held in high regard on the strength of the work it has done and is doing.

Harmony of interest between the State and private forest owners, which the whole Austrian forest policy favors, is notably secured by the encouragement of the wood export trade through such provisions as reduced freight rates, the absence of export duties, and moderate forest taxation.

A "reboisement" or reforestation law, based on that of France, was passed in 1884, to control torrents. This law carries an annual appropriation of $100,000, and the planting work, like that on the lands of the Karst, is carried on under the direction of the "protective service." For the regulation of the lower rivers $1,350,000 was appropriated at the same time, and of this sum $400,000 has been successfully expended on reforestation.

HUNGARY.

Hungary has 23,000,000 acres of forest, of which the State owns 16 per cent; corporations, 20 per cent; churches, cloisters, and other institutions, 7.5 per cent; and private persons the remainder. From $10,000,000 to $12,000,000 worth of wood is annually exported.

About half of all the Hungarian forests are under working plans, by which the cut is regulated so as to provide for a sustained yield, and the present annual cut of 1,000,000,000 cubic feet is believed to be considerably less than the wood actually produced. The State forests yield $600,000 net annual revenue.

The management of all corporation and protection forests has been supervised by the Government since 1879, and all so-called "absolute