Until the 16th century, whatever regulations had been issued regarding
forest use were merely of administrative or police character and had
nothing to do with management or silviculture, except perhaps so far as
the number of _baliveaux_, reserved trees to be left, might be
considered as bearing upon the subject. The _réformateurs_ who were from
time to time appointed had to deal only with judicial questions and
abuses; and usually the ordinances referred only to special forests, but
in 1563, the _Table de marbre_ of Paris issued instructions which were
to serve in all forests.
A futile attempt to secure statistical knowledge of the forest domain
was made, apparently with a view to regulation of the cut, by de Fleury,
the chief of the forest service in 1561. In default of data from many of
the _maîtrises_, a provisional partial order to regulate the cut was
issued in 1573, which remained in force for a hundred years, and was
regularly disregarded, extraordinary cuts being made without authority
and with the connivance of the officers.
An ordinance of 1579 describes the deplorable condition of the forests
at length, and calls for statistical data, but again without result. A
number of further ordinances also made no impression upon the callous
and corrupt officials of the forest service.
A first class attempt to secure more conservative forest use and to
regulate the cut was made by Henry IV in instituting a commission, and,
as a result of its report, issuing his general order of Rouen, in 1597,
a highly interesting document giving insight into conditions and
opinions of the foresters of that period. It also remained without any
result whatsoever.
Repeated replacement of the higher officials had no more effect than the
issuance of ordinances.
Not until Colbert’s vigorous reform in 1669 came a change in conditions.
Meanwhile, some forestry notions had been developed: a sequence of
felling areas in the coppice, and hence an area division, an idea of
rotation and of the exploitable age (10 to 20 years, although sometimes
down to 3 and 4 years), the leaving of overwood, which became obligatory
in the royal domain, and a kind of regulation of its age (40 years--too
short according to one writer of the time to furnish valuable trees),
and some proper considerations of its selection.
In the timber forest, the fellings proceeded by area in regular order
from year to year, leaving a prescribed number of marked seed trees, at
least 6 to 8 per acre, on such areas as were outside the rights of user
and removed from the likelihood of depredations; the felling age being
at least 100 years, under the notion that the oak, the most favored
species, “grows for one hundred years, keeps vigorous but stands still
for another hundred, and declines in a third hundred.” Sowing of acorns
on prepared ground was also ordered in the 16th century, and perhaps
occasionally done. Young growths were sometimes protected by ditches or
fences against cattle, although objections were raised against the
former as impeding the chase. A diameter limit sometimes reserved all
oak and beech two feet in circumference at six inches from the ground,
the height of the stump. Even improvement cuttings (called _recépages_)
are on record in Normandie, mainly for the purpose of cutting out
softwoods and freeing the young valuable reproduction, repeated in
decennial returns. Later, thinnings assumed the character of selection
fellings and, indeed, received the name of _jardinage_. They were
continued until the time for final cut and regeneration had arrived. In
the coniferous mountain forests, selection cutting, pure and simple, was
the rule.
It appears, then, that quite sane notions of silviculture existed,
albeit they may not have been very generally and very strictly carried
out. Especially during the 16th century, the maladministration of the
royal domain brought with it a decadence of the practice in the woods;
the area of the coppice increased by clear cutting at the expense of the
timber forest, and, by Colbert’s time, all forestry knowledge had
wellnigh become forgotten.
The forest ordinance of 1669 attempted to reform not only the
administrative abuses but to improve the method of exploitation hitherto
practised; at least it put in writing, codified as it were, the best
usage of the time. A commission of 21 was instituted to make working
plans and prescribe the practice.
The prescriptions had reference both to management and silvicultural
practice. A felling budget (_état d’assiette_) was prescribed annually
by the _grand maître_ for each _garderie_ (district), and felling areas
were also, sometimes, but not always, definitely located. Besides,
extraordinary fellings might be ordered.
The _garderies_ were divided into _triages_ (now called _cantons_),
management classes or site classes under different rotations, and the
fellings proceeded in each _triage_ in sequence.
In each felling area, as had supposedly been the practice, at least 8
seed trees per acre, and generally 16, besides those under the diameter
limit, were to be left--the method _à tire et aire_.
Intermediary fellings--thinnings--were avoided and frowned down upon,
probably because of the abuses to which they had given rise. Meanwhile
their need grew more and more, especially in those places where the
felling method did not produce satisfactory regeneration, and softwoods
impeded the development of the better kinds. To improve the chances for
valuable regeneration and to keep the softwoods down, the foresters
proposed the reduction of rotations from 100 to 50 and even 40 years,
and, as with each felling the number of reserve trees had to be left,
the forest assumed a form resembling the coppice under standards.
In the coniferous woods of the mountains (fir), which in Colbert’s time
appear almost like a new discovery to his reformers, the selection
forest with a diameter limit (e.g., 6 inch at the small end of the
21-foot log) was the method most generally in vogue, and is still to a
large extent the method in use, but somewhat better regulated and
modified, sometimes with improvement fellings added. In some parts,
especially in Lorraine, for a time, artificial regeneration and a strip
system were tried, and even a group selection with a regeneration period
of probably 25 to 30 years and an exploitable age of 100 years, was
practised in the 18th century.
Buffon, in 1739, proposed a treatment for the pineries to secure natural
regeneration by cutting one-third to one-half, leaving 40 to 50 seed
trees per acre, while Duhamel (1780) considers selection method best for
larch and pine as well as fir, although pine might, like oak, be readily
reproduced by sowing.
While system and orderly progress of fellings in selection forest had
gradually been established, during the revolution this was largely
disregarded and unconservative fellings became the order.
_Guiot’s Manuel forestier_, published in 1770, gives a good idea of the
status of forestry at that time. It appears that for timber forest,
mostly royal woods, rotations varying from 60 to 200 years, for coppice
from 10 to 20 years, were in use on the royal domain; that fellings were
regulated according to species, soil quality and the most advantageous
yield. To facilitate regeneration, a superficial culture of the soil is
also advocated.
The prescription of Colbert’s ordinance to leave a certain number of
seed trees, no matter for what species or conditions of soil or climate
had as early as 1520 been pointed out as faulty by one of the grand
masters, _Tristan de Rostaing_, who had recommended a method of
successive fellings. This prescription, applied pretty nearly uniformly
as a matter of law, removed from the officials all spirit of initiative
and desire or requirement of improving upon it. No knowledge beyond that
of the law was required of them, hence no development of silvicultural
methods resulted during the 17th and 18th century. The seed trees left
on the felling areas grew into undesirable and branchy “wolves,”
injuring the aftergrowth, or else were thrown by the wind or died, and
many of the areas became undesirable brush. Not until the first quarter
of the 19th century was a change in this method proposed through men who
imported new ideas from Germany.
When the inefficiency of the _méthode à tire et aire_ was recognized,
the only remedy appeared to lie in a clearing system with artificial
reforestation (recommended by _Réaumur_ and _Duhamel_); and, indeed, the
ordinance of 1669 recognized the probable necessity of filling up fail
places in that manner. Yet the success of the plantings in waste lands
does not seem to have brought about much extension of this method to the
felling areas. As late as 1862, Clavé, complaining of the conditions of
silviculture in France, and of the ignorance regarding it, refers to the
clearing system as _méthode allemande_, the German method. The
shelterwood system, _la méthode du réensemencement_, which was
introduced in theory from Germany by Lorentz in 1827, was hardly applied
until the middle of the century. Indeed, the promulgation of this
superior method cost Lorentz his position in 1839, and other officers
suffered similarly for this “German propaganda.” (see p. 242)[7]
[7] In this statement we follow Clavé and other authors. Huffel
takes exception to this conception of the origin of the shelterwood
system, because he finds in some documents allusion to a modified
application of the _tire et aire_ method which might be construed
into shelterwood regeneration. Indeed, Guiot (1770) and Varennes de
Fenille (1790) describe methods of procedure which resemble somewhat
this method of regeneration. But as the method of successive
fellings was practised in Germany since 1720, and fully developed in
all its detail by 1790--Hartig formulating merely into rules what
was long practised--it is likely that the French authors had heard
of it. Moreover, in another place (vol. III, p. 271) Huffel says:
“At this time (1821) one made several tentative regeneration
cuttings by successive fellings according to the new formula--but
without success.”
At the present time large areas of coppice and of coppice with standards
characterize the holdings of the municipal and private owners, and the
selection forest still plays a considerable part even in the State
forests; the method of shelterwood in compartments, being still more
under discussion than found in practice.
The main credit for advance in silvicultural direction which belongs to
the French foresters in particular is the development of new and fertile
ideas regarding the operations of thinnings; here the differentiation of
the crop into the final harvest (_le haut_) and the nurse crop (_le
bas_) (see page 105) and the differentiation of the operations, _par le
haut_ and _par le bas_, seems to have been for the first time described
by Boppe in 1887. Indeed, the theory of thinnings, at least, seems to
have been well understood by Buffon, who advanced his theories in a
memoir to the Academy of France, in 1774, and gives a very clear
exposition of the value of thinnings and improvement cuttings.
Nevertheless, thinning practice, while often accentuated in the
literature, is too often omitted in practice, or exercised only in long
intervals, while otherwise silvicultural practice is excellent,
especially in the coppice. Most valuable lessons may be had especially
from the experience in converting coppice into timber forest.
At the International Congress of Silviculture, convening in connection
with the Universal Exposition in 1900, supposedly the best home talent
was represented, but it cannot be said that anything new, or striking,
or promotive of the art or science transpired. The desirability of
establishing experiment stations outside the one in existence at Nancy
(established in 1882), and the desirability of constructing yield tables
still required arguments at this meeting.
In the direction of forest organization, it is stated by Clavé that in
1860 only 900,000 acres of the State domain were under a regulated
management, namely 380,000 acres in timber forest and 520,000 in coppice
with standards, leaving about 1,500,000 acres at that time still merely
exploited. The same writer states that of the corporation or communal
forests hardly any are under management for sustained yield, and private
forest management is not mentioned in this connection. Even to-day less
than one-third of the total area is under systematic control. In 1908
still, about 14% of the State forests were without working plans, and
15% in selection forest.
The method of forest organization employed, outside of the crude
determinations of a felling budget in the selection forest, is an
imitation of Cotta’s combined area and volume allotment, with hardly any
attempt of securing normality, introduced in 1825. Characteristic, and
differing from the German model, is the practice of actually
collocating in each district (_canton_) the periodic felling areas
(_affectations_) on the ground so as to secure a schematic felling
series or periodic block (_séries_). This is done often at great
sacrifice. Lately, various, more pliable modifications have come into
vogue (_méthode de l’affectation unique_) and freer methods (_méthode du
quartier de régénération_), somewhat similar to Judeich’s stand
management, are proposed. Altogether working plans, such as are
elaborated in Germany, are rare, and yield tables are still looked upon
by Huffel as doubtfully useful.
The management of the State forests is extremely conservative, large
accumulations of old stock, the holding over of one quarter for reserve,
and high rotations--only apparently based on maximum volume production,
since the statistical data are scanty--are characteristic. The opposite
conditions appear in the private forests.