[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.
The French forestry literature has never been prolific, and to this day occupies still a limited amount of shelf room. The first book on record is a translation of the well known volume of the Italian, Peter de Crescentiis, translated at the instance of Charles V in 1373. In the 16th century we have reference to an encyclopædic volume, probably similar to the German Hausväter, by Oliver de Serres, Théatre d’Agriculture et Mesnage des Champs, in which a chapter is devoted to the forests. During the 18th century, just as in Germany the cameralists, we have in France a number of high class writings, not by foresters, but by savants or students of natural history, the names of Réaumur, Duhamel, Buffon and Micheaux appearing with memoirs transmitted to the Academy of France, the highest literary and scientific body of men, on subjects relating to forestry. Réaumur, in his Réflexions sur l’état des forêts, in 1721, recommended the conversion of coppice forests into timber forests by a system of thinnings, but it is evident that his words were not heard beyond the Academy. Duhamel (in 1755, 1764, 1780) repeats the recommendation of Réaumur in his three memoirs, Semis et Plantations, Exploitation des Bois and Traité de la Physique des Arbres, in which he exhibits considerable learning, while Buffon, the great naturalist, in 1739 and after, presented several memoirs on forestry subjects full of excellent advice. Varennes de Fenille, another one of the Academicians, but also one of the conservators is on record with two memoirs (1790, 1791) on the management of coppice and timber forests in which also the theory of thinnings was well developed. But among the foresters of the service there seems not to have been sufficient education to appreciate these writings, or, with the exception of Guiot with his Manuel forestier (1770), to bring forth any contributions to the literature and art, until the 19th century. In 1803, we find the first encyclopædic volume in Traité de l’Aménagement des Forêts, which was followed, in 1805, by a very incorrect translation of Hartig’s Lehrbuch, both by Baudrillart, professor of political economy, who also published in 12 volumes his Traité Général des Eaux et Forêts. Perthuis, in 1796, and Dralet, a forester, in 1807, also brought out treatises on forest management, which include all branches of the subject.
According to Huffel, the foresters of this period (Louis XV and XVI) were of superior character, and forestry in France the first in the world; the writings of French authors were being translated into German and studied by foreign foresters. He has to admit, however, that the majority of these authors were not really members of the forest service.
In 1836 appeared Parade’s Cours Elémentaire de Culture des Bois, an excellent book, recording the teachings of Hartig and Cotta. This seems to have been all-sufficient until 1873, at least. Such things as yield tables are still a mere wish, when Tassy wrote his Etudes, etc., in 1858, while de Salomon a little later reproduced Cotta’s yield tables, and to this day this needful tool of the forester is still almost absent, at least in the literature of France. Nanquette, Broillard, Bagneris, Puton, Reuss, Boppe, all directors or professors at the forest school, enriched the French literature by volumes on silviculture and forest management, and Henry on soil physics. He also translated from the German Wollny’s Décomposition des matières organiques. It is claimed by Guyot, that a truly “French science” (!) of forestry dates from Broillard’s Cours d’aménagement in 1878. Demontzey’s Reboisement des montagnes, 1882, is a classic volume. Of more modern book literature may be mentioned three voluminous publications, namely Traité des arbres by Mouillefert (1892-1898) in 3 volumes, and Traité d’exploitation commerciale des bois by Matthey in two volumes, and Guyot’s Cours de droit forestier in two volumes. A very complete work on valuation of damage under the misleading title Incendies en forêt was published by Jacquot in 1903.
But the latest and perhaps most ambitious work in the French language and especially of intense interest from the historical point of view, tracing not only the development of forest policies but of silvicultural and managerial practices in France, is G. Huffel’s Economie Forestière in three volumes published 1904-1907.
There should not be forgotten as among the non-professional promoters of forest questions, Chevandier, a chemist and manufacturer, who, in 1844, made investigations regarding the influence of irrigation on wood growth and on the influence of fertilizers, and in connection with Wertheim, laid the foundation for timber physics.