A Brief History of Forestry.. Fernow Bernhard Eduard
under the direction either of specially appointed officials or the officials of the princes. Finally, in some sections (Hesse-Kassel, 1711; Baden, 1787), the management of these communal forests was entirely undertaken by the government.
In Prussia, by the Order of 1754, the foresters of the State were charged with the supervision of the communal forests, in which they were to designate the trees to be felled and the cultures to be executed; but as there was no pay connected with this additional duty and the districts were too large, the execution of this supervision was but indifferently performed.
In 1749, a special city forest order placed the city forests in Prussia under the provincial governments, requiring for their management the employment of a forester and the inspection of his work by the provincial forestmaster.
5. Personnel
Although all this supervision was probably more or less lax, the possibility of more general and incisive influence was increasing because the personnel to whom such supervision could be intrusted was at last coming into existence.
The men in whose hands at the beginning of the 18th century lay the task of developing and executing forest policies and of developing forestry practice came from two very different classes. The work in the woods fell naturally to the share of the huntsmen and forest guards, who by their practical life in the woods had secured some wood lore and developed some technical detail upon empiric basis. These so-called holzgerechte Jaeger (woodcrafty hunters) prepared for their duties by placing themselves under the direction of an established huntsman, who taught them what he knew about the rules of the chase, while by questioning woodchoppers, colliers, etc., and by their own observation the knowledge of woodcraft was acquired.
At the head of affairs stood the so-called cameralists or chamber officials, men who had prepared themselves by the study of philosophy, law, diplomacy and political economy for the positions of directors of finance and State administration. Rather ignorant of natural science, and without practical forestry knowledge, their efforts were not always well directed. They deserve credit, however, for having collected into encyclopædic volumes the empiric knowledge of the practitioners or Holzgerechten, and for having elaborated it more or less successfully. In this work they were joined by some of the professors of cameralia and law at the universities.
By the middle of the 18th century the hunters had so far grown in knowledge and education as to be able to produce their knowledge in books of their own. Quite a literature developed full of acrimonious warfare of opinions, as is the rule where empiricism rules supreme.
Notable progress, however, came only when hunting was placed in the background and more or less divorced from forest work.
6. Development of Silviculture
In addition to the restrictive measures and attempts at mere conservative lumbering without much thought of reproduction, there were as early as the 16th century silvicultural methods applied to secure or foster reproduction.
Owing to differences in local conditions and difference in necessities, this development varied greatly in various sections as to the time it took place. The Western and Middle country practiced as early as the 16th century what in the Eastern country did not appear until the 18th century. The forest ordinances, from which we derive our knowledge or inferences of these conditions, prescribed, to be sure, many things that probably were not really put into practice.
a. Natural regeneration was at first merely favored, without the adoption of any very positive measures to secure it, namely, by removing the cut wood within the year, so as to give young growth a chance of establishing itself, by removing the brush so as not to smother the young growth, by keeping out cattle from the young growth (Schonung).
If the selection method of lumbering, most generally practiced without much plan, did not produce any desirable result in reproduction, the clear cutting which was practiced without system where charcoal manufacturing or river driving invited to it, did even less so. In either case, besides the defective and damaged old stubs which were left in the logging, a poor aftergrowth of undesirable character remained, as is the case in the American woods on so many areas.
As early as 1524 and 1529, we have record of a conscious attempt to secure a reproduction by leaving ten to thirty seed trees per acre; but the result was disappointing, for this practice, being applied to the shallow-rooted spruce, produced the inevitable result, namely, the seed trees were thrown by the winds.
This experience led to the prescription (in 1565) in the Palatinate to leave, besides seed trees, parts of the other stand for protection against wind damage; later, wind protection was sought by leaving parcels standing on all four sides, giving rise to a checkerboard progress of fellings or a group system of reproduction, which by the middle of the 18th century had developed into the regular strip system, applied in Austria (1766) to fir and spruce, and in Prussia (1764) to pine. And this marginal seeding method remained for a long time the favorite method for the conifers.
To avoid long strips and distribute the fellings more conveniently, v. Berlepsch (in Kassel) recommended (in 1760) the cutting in echelons (curtain method, Kulissenhieb), which insured better seeding, but also increased danger from windfalls, and was never much practiced, the disadvantages of the method being shown up especially in the Prussian Forest Order of 1788.
In the first half of the 18th century it was recognized that the wind danger would be considerably reduced by making the fellings progress from East or Northeast to West. The conception of a regular, properly located felling series was first elaborated in the Harz mountains in 1745 by von Langen, who also accentuated the necessity of preserving a wind mantle on exposed situations. Both of these propositions reappear in the Prussian Order of 1780, according to which fellings are to proceed in a breadth of twenty to thirty-five rods from East to West.
The application of a nursetree method for conifers was proposed in 1787 by v. Burgsdorf (Prussia), a dark position (Dunkelschlag) and a regeneration period of seven years being advocated.
In broadleaved forest, besides the selection forest, the natural result of the sprouting capacity of the hardwood had led to a coppice method which was extensively relied upon for fuel production. This was rarely, however, a simple coppice, for, intentionally or unintentionally, some seedlings or sprouts would be allowed to grow on, leading to a composite forest and finally to a regular coppice with standards (1569, etc.), with an intentional holding over of the valuable oak and ash for standards. Probably, however, large areas of unconsciously produced composite forest exhibited sad pictures of branchy overwood with suppressed underwood of poor sprouts, injured by game and cattle – a scrubby growth, into which crept softwoods of birch and aspen. Attempts at pruning such scrub growths into shape on quite an extensive scale are on record.
The recognition that more wood per acre could be secured by lengthening the rotation of the coppice, which seems to have been mostly twelve years or less, led to twenty and thirty year turns and finally to fifty, sixty and even eighty year rotations or so-called polewood management (Brunswick, 1745), also called Hochwald (high forest).
A full description and working plan for such a forest to be managed in eighty year rotation, the city forest of Mainz in the Odenwald and Spessart mountains, dates from 1773, and this polewood forest management became quite general after the middle of the 18th century, but in the last half of the 19th century it was generally replaced by the true high forest management under nursetrees, the experiences with the natural reproduction of conifer forest having proved the advantages of this method.
The primitive beginnings of this so-called Femelschlag method (Compartment selection or shelterwood method) are found, in 1720, in Hesse Darmstadt, where Oberforstmeister von Minnigerode prescribed regular fellings progressing from north to south, in which all material down to polewood size (in selection or virgin forest) was to be removed, excepting only a number of clean boles, one every ten to twelve paces being left for seed and nursetrees. The good results in reproduction stimulated owners of adjoining estates to imitate the method (1737).
The observation that in beech forest the young crop needed protection and succeeded better when gradually freed from the shade of the seed trees, especially on south and west aspects