Part 17

A young engineer, _Surell_, was the first to study the possibility of coping with the evil and proved in his _Etude sur les torrents_, in 1841, its relation to forest cover, and the need of attacking it at the sources. The first work of recovery was tentatively begun in 1843, but the political events following did not promote its extension, until, in 1860, a special law charged the Forest Department with the mission of extinguishing the torrents. There were recognized two categories of work, the one, considered of general public interest being designated as obligatory, the other with less immediate need being facultative; the territories devastated by each river and its affluents on which the work of recovery was to be executed were known as perimeters. In the obligatory perimeters, private lands were to be acquired by the state by process of expropriation, the communal properties were to be only for a time occupied by the state and after the achievement of the recovery were to be restituted on payment of the expense of the work; or else the corporation could get rid of the debt by ceding one-half of its property to the state.

In the facultative perimeters, the state was simply to assist in the work of recovery by gratuitous distribution of seeds and plants, or even by money subventions in some cases. It appeared hard that the poor mountaineers should have to bear all the expense of the extinction of the torrents, and much complaint was heard. In response to these complaints, in 1864, a law was passed allowing the substitution of sodding instead of forest planting for at least part of the perimeters, with a view of securing pastures; but this method seems not to have been successful and was mostly not employed.

Finally, by the reboisement law of 1882, the complaints of the mountaineers were properly taken care of by placing the entire expense of the reboisement work on the state. The attitude of the mountaineers, which was at first hostile, due to the restriction of the pasture, has been overcome by the beneficial results of the work, and now the most hostile are ready to offer gratuitously their territory to the Forest Department. Wherever necessary the state has bought territory, and from year to year has increased its holdings, and continues to acquire land at the rate of 25,000 to 30,000 acres per year, the budget of 1902, for instance, containing $1,000,000 for this purpose; that of 1911, only $40,000.

Altogether the state had, up to 1900, acquired 400,000 acres, of which 218,000 have been planted, and it is estimated that about 430,000 acres more will have to be acquired. The total expense, outside of subventions to communities and private owners, up to 1900 has been over $13,000,000, of which somewhat over $5,000,000 was expended for purchases, it is estimated that round $25 to $30 million more will be needed to complete the work. Of the 1,462 torrents there were in 1893, 163 entirely controlled, and 654 begun to be “cured.” Among the former, there were 31 which 50 years ago were considered by engineers incurable. It is estimated that, with the expenditure of $600,000 per annum, the work may be finished by 1945. The names of Matthieu and Demontzey, especially the latter, are indelibly connected with this great work.

Lately, however, Briot in his classical work _Les Alpes françaises_ criticizes severely as improperly extravagant the large expenditures in places where the result does not warrant them, and proclaims as illusory some of the methods adopted.

5. _Forestry Science and Practice._

Until the 16th century, whatever regulations had been issued regarding forest use were merely of administrative or police character and had nothing to do with management or silviculture, except perhaps so far as the number of _baliveaux_, reserved trees to be left, might be considered as bearing upon the subject. The _réformateurs_ who were from time to time appointed had to deal only with judicial questions and abuses; and usually the ordinances referred only to special forests, but in 1563, the _Table de marbre_ of Paris issued instructions which were to serve in all forests.

A futile attempt to secure statistical knowledge of the forest domain was made, apparently with a view to regulation of the cut, by de Fleury, the chief of the forest service in 1561. In default of data from many of the _maîtrises_, a provisional partial order to regulate the cut was issued in 1573, which remained in force for a hundred years, and was regularly disregarded, extraordinary cuts being made without authority and with the connivance of the officers.

An ordinance of 1579 describes the deplorable condition of the forests at length, and calls for statistical data, but again without result. A number of further ordinances also made no impression upon the callous and corrupt officials of the forest service.

A first class attempt to secure more conservative forest use and to regulate the cut was made by Henry IV in instituting a commission, and, as a result of its report, issuing his general order of Rouen, in 1597, a highly interesting document giving insight into conditions and opinions of the foresters of that period. It also remained without any result whatsoever.

Repeated replacement of the higher officials had no more effect than the issuance of ordinances.

Not until Colbert’s vigorous reform in 1669 came a change in conditions.

Meanwhile, some forestry notions had been developed: a sequence of felling areas in the coppice, and hence an area division, an idea of rotation and of the exploitable age (10 to 20 years, although sometimes down to 3 and 4 years), the leaving of overwood, which became obligatory in the royal domain, and a kind of regulation of its age (40 years--too short according to one writer of the time to furnish valuable trees), and some proper considerations of its selection.

In the timber forest, the fellings proceeded by area in regular order from year to year, leaving a prescribed number of marked seed trees, at least 6 to 8 per acre, on such areas as were outside the rights of user and removed from the likelihood of depredations; the felling age being at least 100 years, under the notion that the oak, the most favored species, “grows for one hundred years, keeps vigorous but stands still for another hundred, and declines in a third hundred.” Sowing of acorns on prepared ground was also ordered in the 16th century, and perhaps occasionally done. Young growths were sometimes protected by ditches or fences against cattle, although objections were raised against the former as impeding the chase. A diameter limit sometimes reserved all oak and beech two feet in circumference at six inches from the ground, the height of the stump. Even improvement cuttings (called _recépages_) are on record in Normandie, mainly for the purpose of cutting out softwoods and freeing the young valuable reproduction, repeated in decennial returns. Later, thinnings assumed the character of selection fellings and, indeed, received the name of _jardinage_. They were continued until the time for final cut and regeneration had arrived. In the coniferous mountain forests, selection cutting, pure and simple, was the rule.

It appears, then, that quite sane notions of silviculture existed, albeit they may not have been very generally and very strictly carried out. Especially during the 16th century, the maladministration of the royal domain brought with it a decadence of the practice in the woods; the area of the coppice increased by clear cutting at the expense of the timber forest, and, by Colbert’s time, all forestry knowledge had wellnigh become forgotten.

The forest ordinance of 1669 attempted to reform not only the administrative abuses but to improve the method of exploitation hitherto practised; at least it put in writing, codified as it were, the best usage of the time. A commission of 21 was instituted to make working plans and prescribe the practice.

The prescriptions had reference both to management and silvicultural practice. A felling budget (_état d’assiette_) was prescribed annually by the _grand maître_ for each _garderie_ (district), and felling areas were also, sometimes, but not always, definitely located. Besides, extraordinary fellings might be ordered.

The _garderies_ were divided into _triages_ (now called _cantons_), management classes or site classes under different rotations, and the fellings proceeded in each _triage_ in sequence.

In each felling area, as had supposedly been the practice, at least 8 seed trees per acre, and generally 16, besides those under the diameter limit, were to be left--the method _à tire et aire_.

Intermediary fellings--thinnings--were avoided and frowned down upon, probably because of the abuses to which they had given rise. Meanwhile their need grew more and more, especially in those places where the felling method did not produce satisfactory regeneration, and softwoods impeded the development of the better kinds. To improve the chances for valuable regeneration and to keep the softwoods down, the foresters proposed the reduction of rotations from 100 to 50 and even 40 years, and, as with each felling the number of reserve trees had to be left, the forest assumed a form resembling the coppice under standards.

In the coniferous woods of the mountains (fir), which in Colbert’s time appear almost like a new discovery to his reformers, the selection forest with a diameter limit (e.g., 6 inch at the small end of the 21-foot log) was the method most generally in vogue, and is still to a large extent the method in use, but somewhat better regulated and modified, sometimes with improvement fellings added. In some parts, especially in Lorraine, for a time, artificial regeneration and a strip system were tried, and even a group selection with a regeneration period of probably 25 to 30 years and an exploitable age of 100 years, was practised in the 18th century.

Buffon, in 1739, proposed a treatment for the pineries to secure natural regeneration by cutting one-third to one-half, leaving 40 to 50 seed trees per acre, while Duhamel (1780) considers selection method best for larch and pine as well as fir, although pine might, like oak, be readily reproduced by sowing.

While system and orderly progress of fellings in selection forest had gradually been established, during the revolution this was largely disregarded and unconservative fellings became the order.

_Guiot’s Manuel forestier_, published in 1770, gives a good idea of the status of forestry at that time. It appears that for timber forest, mostly royal woods, rotations varying from 60 to 200 years, for coppice from 10 to 20 years, were in use on the royal domain; that fellings were regulated according to species, soil quality and the most advantageous yield. To facilitate regeneration, a superficial culture of the soil is also advocated.

The prescription of Colbert’s ordinance to leave a certain number of seed trees, no matter for what species or conditions of soil or climate had as early as 1520 been pointed out as faulty by one of the grand masters, _Tristan de Rostaing_, who had recommended a method of successive fellings. This prescription, applied pretty nearly uniformly as a matter of law, removed from the officials all spirit of initiative and desire or requirement of improving upon it. No knowledge beyond that of the law was required of them, hence no development of silvicultural methods resulted during the 17th and 18th century. The seed trees left on the felling areas grew into undesirable and branchy “wolves,” injuring the aftergrowth, or else were thrown by the wind or died, and many of the areas became undesirable brush. Not until the first quarter of the 19th century was a change in this method proposed through men who imported new ideas from Germany.

When the inefficiency of the _méthode à tire et aire_ was recognized, the only remedy appeared to lie in a clearing system with artificial reforestation (recommended by _Réaumur_ and _Duhamel_); and, indeed, the ordinance of 1669 recognized the probable necessity of filling up fail places in that manner. Yet the success of the plantings in waste lands does not seem to have brought about much extension of this method to the felling areas. As late as 1862, Clavé, complaining of the conditions of silviculture in France, and of the ignorance regarding it, refers to the clearing system as _méthode allemande_, the German method. The shelterwood system, _la méthode du réensemencement_, which was introduced in theory from Germany by Lorentz in 1827, was hardly applied until the middle of the century. Indeed, the promulgation of this superior method cost Lorentz his position in 1839, and other officers suffered similarly for this “German propaganda.” (see p. 242)[7]

[7] In this statement we follow Clavé and other authors. Huffel takes exception to this conception of the origin of the shelterwood system, because he finds in some documents allusion to a modified application of the _tire et aire_ method which might be construed into shelterwood regeneration. Indeed, Guiot (1770) and Varennes de Fenille (1790) describe methods of procedure which resemble somewhat this method of regeneration. But as the method of successive fellings was practised in Germany since 1720, and fully developed in all its detail by 1790--Hartig formulating merely into rules what was long practised--it is likely that the French authors had heard of it. Moreover, in another place (vol. III, p. 271) Huffel says: “At this time (1821) one made several tentative regeneration cuttings by successive fellings according to the new formula--but without success.”

At the present time large areas of coppice and of coppice with standards characterize the holdings of the municipal and private owners, and the selection forest still plays a considerable part even in the State forests; the method of shelterwood in compartments, being still more under discussion than found in practice.

The main credit for advance in silvicultural direction which belongs to the French foresters in particular is the development of new and fertile ideas regarding the operations of thinnings; here the differentiation of the crop into the final harvest (_le haut_) and the nurse crop (_le bas_) (see page 105) and the differentiation of the operations, _par le haut_ and _par le bas_, seems to have been for the first time described by Boppe in 1887. Indeed, the theory of thinnings, at least, seems to have been well understood by Buffon, who advanced his theories in a memoir to the Academy of France, in 1774, and gives a very clear exposition of the value of thinnings and improvement cuttings.

Nevertheless, thinning practice, while often accentuated in the literature, is too often omitted in practice, or exercised only in long intervals, while otherwise silvicultural practice is excellent, especially in the coppice. Most valuable lessons may be had especially from the experience in converting coppice into timber forest.

At the International Congress of Silviculture, convening in connection with the Universal Exposition in 1900, supposedly the best home talent was represented, but it cannot be said that anything new, or striking, or promotive of the art or science transpired. The desirability of establishing experiment stations outside the one in existence at Nancy (established in 1882), and the desirability of constructing yield tables still required arguments at this meeting.

In the direction of forest organization, it is stated by Clavé that in 1860 only 900,000 acres of the State domain were under a regulated management, namely 380,000 acres in timber forest and 520,000 in coppice with standards, leaving about 1,500,000 acres at that time still merely exploited. The same writer states that of the corporation or communal forests hardly any are under management for sustained yield, and private forest management is not mentioned in this connection. Even to-day less than one-third of the total area is under systematic control. In 1908 still, about 14% of the State forests were without working plans, and 15% in selection forest.

The method of forest organization employed, outside of the crude determinations of a felling budget in the selection forest, is an imitation of Cotta’s combined area and volume allotment, with hardly any attempt of securing normality, introduced in 1825. Characteristic, and differing from the German model, is the practice of actually collocating in each district (_canton_) the periodic felling areas (_affectations_) on the ground so as to secure a schematic felling series or periodic block (_séries_). This is done often at great sacrifice. Lately, various, more pliable modifications have come into vogue (_méthode de l’affectation unique_) and freer methods (_méthode du quartier de régénération_), somewhat similar to Judeich’s stand management, are proposed. Altogether working plans, such as are elaborated in Germany, are rare, and yield tables are still looked upon by Huffel as doubtfully useful.

The management of the State forests is extremely conservative, large accumulations of old stock, the holding over of one quarter for reserve, and high rotations--only apparently based on maximum volume production, since the statistical data are scanty--are characteristic. The opposite conditions appear in the private forests.

6. _Education and Literature._

In the earlier times the service established was as we have seen, often, nay mostly in incompetent hands; the offices of forestmasters were purchasable, were given to courtiers as benefices, and became hereditary. In all these, higher professional knowledge was unnecessary. The ignorance of the subordinates was as great as that of their German counterparts, but lasted longer. Hardly any book literature on the subject of forestry developed before the 19th century, and educational institutions had to wait until long past the beginning of that century.

The first, and up to the present, only forest school, came into existence after a considerable campaign, directed by Baudrillart, Chief of Division, Administration Générale des Forêts, and professor of political economy. His campaign in the _Annales Forestières_, the first volume of which appeared in 1808, and in other writings as in his _Dictionnaire des eaux et forêts_ (1825), led to the establishment of the forest school at Nancy in 1825.

The first director of this school, _Bernard Lorentz_, having become acquainted with and befriended by G. L. Hartig, and his assistant, afterward his son-in-law and successor, _Adolphe Parade_, having studied under Cotta (1817-1818) in Tharandt, this school introduced the science of forestry as it had then been developed in Germany; but later generations under _Nanquette_, _Bagneris_, _Broillard_, _Boppe_ and _Puton_, imbued with patriotism, attempted in a manner to strike out on original lines.

As a consequence of the “unpatriotic” German tendencies of its first directors the continuance of the school at Nancy was several times threatened, there being friction between the administration of the school and the service, which in 1844 came to a climax, agents in the service being employed without preparation in the school, a condition which lasted until 1856.

Even to date an active service of 15 years is considered equivalent to the education in the school for advancement in the service.

In 1839, Lorentz was disgracefully displaced, in spite of his great merits, because he advocated too warmly the application of the superior system of regeneration under shelterwood to replace the coppice and selection forest, an incident almost precisely repeated in the State of New York in abandoning its State College at Cornell University; and in other respects the two cases appear parallel.[8] Parade, the successor of Lorentz being imbued with the same heretical doctrines was constantly in trouble, and in 1847, a most savage attack in the legislature was launched which threatened the collapse of the school. This condition lasted until Parade’s death, in 1864, when _Nanquette_ assumed guidance of the school and steered in more peaceful waters by avoiding all ideas at reforms and innovations, but otherwise improving the character of the school and introducing the third year study. But he, too, was much criticized and in difficulties until 1880; nor was _Puton_, his successor, free from troubles, until in 1889 a new regime and new regulations were enacted.

[8] According to others (a reviewer of this volume), the difficulties which befell the institution were financial ones, “the too rapid conversion into timberforest reducing receipts, which the Minister of Finance resented.” Guyot’s history of the school, however, leaves little doubt of the above interpretation being correct. In the case of the State College at Cornell University, a later historian might similarly claim financial difficulties, the school having actually been closed for lack of appropriation; nevertheless political trickery was the real cause of this lack.

The school is organized on military lines. The students, who intend to enter the State service are chosen from the graduates of the Institute national agronomique of Paris, only a limited number being admitted. It has 12 professors, two for forestry, two each for natural science, mathematics, and one each for law, soil physics and agriculture, for military science and for German. A three year course, which includes journeys through the forest regions of France, leads to government employment; indeed, the first paid position as _garde général stagiaire_ is attained after two years study and before leaving school.

For several years, (1867 to 1884) English students preparing for the Indian service received their instruction here, and 380 foreigners have received their education in this school since its foundation.

For the education of the lower grades, an imperial rescript ordered the establishment of several schools, which were, however, never organized. In 1863, were proposed, and in 1868, opened, four schools, where efficient forest guards were to secure some knowledge that would assist them to advancement; three of these schools persisted until 1883. In 1873, an additional school for silviculture for the education of underforesters was organized at Barres-Vilmorin, where annually a limited number of students are permitted to enter. This institution has persisted to date.

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