This promotive policy has especially since 1899 found expression in the institution in many provinces of information bureaus, which give technical advice, make working plans, secure plant material and give other assistance to woodland owners.
A new relation, however, of a conservative character arose by the establishment of the entail, i.e., a contract made by the head of the family with the government under which the latter assumes the obligation of forever preventing the heirs from disposing of, diminishing, or mismanaging their property. As a result of this arrangement, many of the larger private forest properties are forced to a conservative management, not as a direct influence of the law, but as a matter of agreement. The condition of state supervision of private and communal forest property at present prevailing is expressed in the following statement of divisions by property classes of forest areas of Germany, which shows that at least 63.9% are under conservative management:
| Total Forest | 34,769,794 acres. |
| Crown forest | 1.8% |
| State forest | 31.9% |
| Corporation forest | 16.1% |
| Institute forest | 1.5% |
| Association forest | 2.2% |
| Private forest (10.4% entail) | 46.5% |
Until the beginning of the present century, the protective function of the forest had played no role in the arguments for state interference, but just about the beginning of the century cries were heard from France that, owing to the reckless devastation of the Vosges and Jura Alps by cutting, by fires and over-grazing, brooks had become torrents, and the valleys were inundated and covered by the debris and silt of the torrents. A new aspect of the results of forest devastation began to be recognized, which found excellent expression in a memoir by Moreau de Jonnès (Brussels, 1825), on the question “What changes does denudation effect on the physical condition of the country.” This being translated into German by Wiedenmann, was widely spread, being interestingly written, although not well founded on facts of natural history and physical laws. Nevertheless, sufficient experience as regards the effect of denudation in mountainous countries had also accumulated in southwest Germany and in the Austrian Alps, and the necessity of protective legislation was recognized. This necessity first found practical expression in the Bavarian law of 1852, in Prussia in 1875, and in Württemberg in 1879. But a really proper basis for formulating a policy or argument for protective legislation outside of the mountainous country is still absent, although for a number of years attempts have been made to secure such basis.
8. Forestry Science and Literature.[5]
[5] The necessarily brief statements which are made under this heading presuppose knowledge of the technical details to which they refer. In this short history it was possible only to sketch rapidly the development of the science in terms familiar to the professional man.
The habit of writing encyclopædic volumes, which the Cameralists and learned hunters had inaugurated in the preceding century, continued into the new one, and we find Hartig, Cotta, Pfeil and Hundeshagen each writing such encyclopædias. Carl Heyer began one in separate volumes, but completed only two of them. Even an encyclopædic work in monographs by several authors was undertaken as early as 1819 by J. M. Bechstein, who with his successors brought out fourteen volumes, covering the ground pretty fully. While in the earlier stages the meager amount of knowledge made it possible to compress the whole into small compass, the more modern encyclopædias of Lorey, Fürst and Dombrowski arose from the opposite consideration, namely, the need of giving a comprehensive survey of the large mass of accumulated knowledge.
Since 1820, monographic writings, however, became more and more the practice. Among the volumes which treat certain branches of forestry monographically, the works of the masters of silviculture, Cotta, Hartig and Heyer, based on their experiences in west and middle Germany, and of Pfeil, referring more particularly to North German conditions, were followed by the South German writers, Gwinner (1834), and Stumpf (1849). In 1855, H. Burkhardt introduced in his classic Säen und Pflanzen a new method of treatment, namely, by species, and after 1850, when the development of general silviculture had been accomplished, such treatment by species became frequent. Of more modern works on general silviculture elaborating the attempts at reform of old practices those of Gayer (1880), Wagener (1884), Borggreve (1885), Ney (1885), all writing in the same decade, are to be especially mentioned. In this connection should be also noticed Fürst’s valuable collective work on nursery practice (Pflanzenzucht im Walde, 1882).
At present the magazine literature furnishes ample opportunity to discuss the development of methods in all directions. The text books at present appearing seem to be justified by or intended mainly for the needs of the teacher and rarely for the practitioner. Such a text book is that by Weise. But the latest contributions to silvicultural literature by Wagner (1907), and Mayr (1909) are works of a new order, utilizing broader ecological knowledge.