A Brief History of Forestry.. Fernow Bernhard Eduard

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      The necessity of clearing farm lands for the growing population continued, even in the western, more densely populated sections, into the 12th and 13th centuries. The cloisters were especially active in colonizing and making farm land with the use of axe and fire, such cloisters being often founded as mere land speculations. Squatters, as with us, were a frequent class of colonists, and in eastern Prussia continued even into the 17th and 18th centuries to appropriate forest land without regard to property rights.

      The disturbed ownership conditions, which we have traced, led also often to wasteful slashing, especially in the western territory, while colonization among the Slavs of the Eastern sections led to similar results. In the 12th century, however, here and there appear the first signs of greater necessity for regulating and restricting forest use in the Mark forest, and for improvement in forest conditions with the purpose of insuring wood supplies.

      In that century, division of the Mark forest begins for the alleged reason that individual ownership would lead to better management and less devastation. In the 12th and 13th centuries also, stricter order in the fellings and in forest use was insisted upon in many places. In the forest ordinances of the princes and barons, which, of course, have always reference to limited localities, we find prescriptions like the following: The amount to be cut is to be limited to the exact needs of each family and the proper use of the wood is to be inspected; the timber is to be marked, must be cut in a given time and be removed at once; only dry wood is to be used for fuel and the place and time for gathering it is specially designated, similar to the present practice. The best oak and beech are to be preserved (this, however, merely with reference to the mast), and in the Alps we find already provisions to reserve larch and pine. The charcoal industry is favored (because of easier transportation of its product), but permitted only under special precautions. Bark peeling and burning for potash is forbidden. The pasture is regulated with regard to the young growth, and sheep and goats are excluded.

      Such measures are, to be sure, found only here and there where local conditions gave rise to a fear of a timber famine; such communities may also be found making attempts to protect themselves against reduction of home supplies by forbidding the export of wood from their territory. An amusing restriction of this kind is found at Altenstadt where the bakers were forbidden to bake bread for any but the citizens of the town.

      The first ordinance prohibiting for clearings is found at Lorsch in the Rhenish country in 1165, and other ordinances with such prohibition are on record in other parts in the 13th century. In 1237, at Salzburg, clearings were prohibited in the interest of the salt mines, “so that the cut forest may grow up to wood again,” and also in other parts where mining interests made a special demand for props or charcoal the regulation of forest use was begun early.

      The difficulties of transportation in the absence of roads rendered local supply of more importance than at present, and this accounts for the early measures to secure more economical use while distant woods were still plentiful but unavailable.

      While in the 12th and 13th centuries a merely restrictive and regulative, or else a let-alone policy, “allowing the wood to grow up,” prevailed, we find in the 14th century the first beginnings of an attempt at forest extension or recuperation.

      In 1309, Henry VII ordered the reforestation of a certain stripped area by sowing. Of the execution of this order we have no record, but the first actually executed plantation on record is that by the city of Nuremberg, in 1368, where several hundred acres of burned area were sowed with pine, spruce and fir; and there is also a record that in 1449 this crop was harvested. In 1420, the city of Frankfort on the Main followed this example, relying on the Nuremberg seed dealer, whose correspondence is extant and who was invited to go to Frankfort for advice how to proceed. He sowed densely in order to secure clear boles, but expressed the opinion that the plants could not be transplanted; he also relied on the phases of the moon for his operations.

      The planting of hardwoods seems to have been begun much later; the first reference to it coming from the cloister and city of Seligenstadt, which agreed in 1491 to reforest annually 20 to 30 acres with oak.

      Natural regeneration by coppice was in quite general practice and proved satisfactory enough for fuelwood production. The system of coppice with standards was also frequently practised, the standards, 20 or 30 to the acre, being “reserved for the lord.”

      In the timber forest, the unregulated selection system was continued generally through the period, although in 1454 we find in the Harz Mountains a transition to a seed tree management, a few seed trees or groups of seed trees being left on the otherwise cleared area, somewhat in the manner of the French méthode à tire et-aire. Toward the end of the 15th century we find here and there a distinction made between timber forest, where no firewood is to be cut, and “leaf forest” which is to serve the latter purpose, and is to be treated as coppice.

      Toward the end of the period we find, however, various provisions which are unquestionably dictated by the fear of a scarcity of timber. The discovery that pasture prevents natural regeneration led to a prohibition of pasturing in the newly cut felling areas. In 1488, we find already a diameter limit of 12 inches – just as is being advocated in the United States now – as a basis for conservative exploitation, the city of Brunswick buying stumpage, and in the contract being limited to this diameter, and in addition obligated to leave 15 oaks or aspen per acre for seed trees.

      Attempts at regulating the use of a given forest by division into felling areas are recorded in 1359, when the city forest of Erfurt, 286 acres, was divided into seven felling areas. It is questionable whether this referred to a coppice with short rotation or whether a selection forest with seven periodic areas is meant.

      We see, then, that the first sporadic and, to be sure, crude beginnings of a forest management in Germany may be traced back to the 14th and 15th centuries; but it took at least 250 to 350 years before such management became general.

      Outside of the information found scattered in forest ordinances, instructions and prescriptions of various kinds there is no forestry literature to be recorded from this period except one single book, published about the year 1300, by an Italian, Petrus de Crescentiis, which was translated into German. It was merely a scholastic compilation on agriculture and allied subjects, mostly cribbed from old Roman writers and without value for German conditions.

      II. First Development of Forestry Methods

(Period 1500 to 1800.)

      The period following the middle ages marks the gradual changes from the feudal system to the modern State organizations and to considerable change of ownership conditions and forest treatment. Various causes which led to an increased development of industrial life were also instrumental in hastening the progress of forest destruction. At the same time, during this period the germs and embryonic beginnings of every branch of forestry, real forestry policy, forestry practice and forestry science are to be noted. By the end of this period, preparatory to more modern conditions, we find organized technical forest administrations, well developed methods of silviculture and systems of forest management.

      1. Development of Forest Property Conditions

      A number of changes in the conceptions of political relations, in methods of life and of political economy brought further changes in property conditions on the same lines as those prevailing in the 14th and 15th centuries. These changes were especially influenced by the spread of Roman law doctrine regarding the rights of the governing classes; by the growth of the cities, favoring industrial development and changing methods of life; by the change from barter to money management, favored by the discovery of America, СКАЧАТЬ