In Croatia-Slavonia, which is in many respects separately administered, an agricultural and forestry school exists at Kreutz (Körös) with a three-year course.
For the lower service four schools of two-year courses have been established by the government, the instruction being given by practitioners, and some of the students receiving free tuition.
A forest experiment station was established in 1898; it issues a quarterly magazine, Irdeszeti Kiserletek, in which its results are recorded.
A Hungarian forestry association was formed in 1866; it issues a monthly journal, distributes pamphlets, gives prizes for literary effort, etc., and is, with over 2000 members, an active agent in the work of reform. A separate forestry association, which also publishes a monthly in the Slavish language, exists in Croatia.
SWITZERLAND.
A very good brief statement of present conditions of forestry in Switzerland with some historical references may be found in Handwörterbuch der Schweizerischen Volkswirthschaft, Berlin 1903, with two chapters by Dr. J. Coaz and Prof. C. Bourgeois.
F. FANKHAUSER, Geschichte des bernischen Forstwesens bis in die neuere Zeit, Bern 1893, gives insight into the developments in one of the cantons, beginning in 1304.
LANDOLT, Ueber die Geschichte der Waldungen und des Forstwesens, Zürich, 1858.
L’évolution forestière dans le canton de Neuchâtel, Histoire-Statistique 1896.
BURRI, Die kulturgeschichtliche Entwicklung und wirthschaftliche Bedeutung des schweizerischen Waldbestands, Luzern 1898.
MEISTER, Die Stadtwaldungen von Zürich, 2d ed, 1903, exhibits on 225 pages in great detail the history and methods of management of this remarkable city forest of only about 3,000 acres.
Report of the British Foreign Office on Swiss Forest Laws, by CONWAY THORNTON, 1888, gives a very satisfactory exposé of the earlier legislation.
The interest which we have in the development of forestry in this small territory, of somewhat less than 16,000 square miles with over three million people, lies in the fact that it is a republic, or rather an aggregation of republics, the oldest in existence, and that, occupying an Alpine mountain country, it has developed a unique co-operative policy of forest protection. Being largely German by origin and sentiment, German influence on the development of forestry methods, outside of the administrative measures, has here been as strong as in Austria.
Switzerland did not exist as a power in name until the 17th century, and as a unit not until the reconstruction of 1815, and in its present settled condition and constitution not until 1848, although the nucleus of its political existence dates back at least 600 years, when, in 1291, the people of the three forest cantons, Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, formed their first league to resist encroachments on their rights by the church and by the feudal barons.