twenty years earlier. Germany produced in 1880 about as much timber as she required; in 1899 she imported 4,600,000 tons, valued at £14,000,000, and her imports are rapidly increasing, although the yield capacity of her own forests is much higher now than it was formerly. Wood is now used for many purposes which formerly were not thought of. The manufacture of the wood pulp annually imported into Britain consumes at least 2,000,000 tons of timber. A fabric closely resembling silk is now made of spruce wood. The variety of other, or minor, produce yielded by forests is very great, and much of it is essential for the well-being of the people and for various industries. The yield of fodder is of the utmost importance in countries subject to periodic droughts; in many places field crops could not be grown successfully without the leaf-mould and brushwood taken from the forests. As regards industries, attention need only be drawn to such articles as commercial fibre, tanning materials, dye-stuffs, lac, turpentine, resin, rubber, gutta-percha, &c. Great Britain and Ireland alone import every year such materials to the value of £12,000,000, half of this being represented by rubber.
The capital employed in forests consists chiefly of the value of the soil and growing stock of timber. The latter is, ordinarily, of much greater value than the former wherever a sustained annual yield of timber is expected from a forest. In the case of a Scotch pine forest, for instance, the value of the growing stock is, under the above-mentioned condition, from three to five times that of the soil. The rate of interest yielded by capital invested in forests differs, of course, considerably according to circumstances, but on the whole it may, under proper management, be placed equal to that yielded by agricultural land; it is lower than the agricultural rate on the better classes of land, but higher on the inferior classes. Hence the latter are specially indicated for the forest industry, and the former for the production of agricultural crops. Forests require labour in a great variety of ways, such as (1) general administration, formation, tending and harvesting; (2) transport of produce; and (3) industries which depend on forests for their prime material. The labour indicated under the first head differs considerably according to circumstances, but its amount is smaller than that required if the land is used for agriculture. Hence forests provide additional labour only if they are established on surplus lands. Owing to the bulky nature of forest produce its transport forms a business of considerable magnitude, the amount of labour being perhaps equal to half that employed under the first head. The greatest amount of labour is, however, required in the working up of the raw material yielded by forests. In this respect attention may be drawn to the chair industry in and around High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, where more than 20,000 workmen are employed in converting the beech, grown on the adjoining chalk hills, into chairs and tools of many patterns. Complete statistics for Great Britain are not available under this head, but it may be mentioned that in Germany the people employed in the forests amount to 2.3% of the total population; those employed on transport of forest produce 1.1%; labourers employed on the various wood industries, 8.6%; or a total of 12%. An important feature of the work connected with forests and their produce is that a great part of it can be made to fit in with the requirements of agriculture; that is to say, it can be done at seasons when field crops do not require attention. Thus the rural labourers or small farmers can earn some money at times when they have nothing else to do, and when they would probably sit idle if no forest work were obtainable.
Whether, or how far, the utility of forests is brought out in a particular country depends on its special conditions, such as (1) the position of a country, its communications, and the control which it exercises over other countries, such as colonies; (2) the quantity and quality of substitutes for forest produce available in the country; (3) the value of land and labour, and the returns which land yields if used for other purposes; (4) the density of population; (5) the amount of capital available for investment; (6) the climate and configuration, especially the geographical position, whether inland or on the border of the sea, &c. No general rule can be laid down, showing whether forests are required in a country, or, if so, to what extent; that question must be answered according to the special circumstances of each case.
The subjoined table shows the forests of various European states:—
| Countries. | Area of Forests, in Acres. |
Percentage of Total Area of Country under Forest. |
Percentage of Forest Area belonging to the State. |
Forest Area per Head of Population, in Acres. |
| Sweden | 49,000,000 | 48 | 33 | 9.5 |
| Norway | 17,000,000 | 21 | 28 | 7.6 |
| Russia, including Finland | 518,000,000 | 40 | 61 | 5.9 |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 6,400,000 | 50 | 78 | 4.0 |
| Bulgaria | 7,600,000 | 30 | 30 | 2.3 |
| Turkey | 11,200,000 | 20 | · · | 1.7 |
| Servia | 3,900,000 | 32 | 37 | 1.5 |
| Rumania | 6,400,000 | 18 | 40 | 1.3 |
| Spain | 21,200,000 | 17 | 84 | 1.2 |
| Hungary | 22,500,000 | 28 | 15 | 1.2 |
| Austria | 24,000,000 | 32 | 7 | .9 |
| Greece | 2,000,000 | 13 | 80 | .85 |
| Luxemburg | 200,000 | 30 | · · | .82 |
| Switzerland | 2,100,000 | 20 | 5 | .7 |
| Germany | 35,000,000 | 26 | 34 | .6 |
| France | 24,000,000 | 18 | 12 | .6 |
| Italy | 10,400,000 | 15 | 4 | .3 |
| Denmark | 600,000 | 6 | 24 | .25 |
| Belgium | 1,300,000 | 18 | 5 | .2 |
| Portugal | 770,000 | 3.5 | 8 | .15 |
| Holland | 560,000 | 7 | ? | .1 |
| Great Britain | 3,000,000 | 4 | 3 | .07 |
These data exhibit considerable differences, since the percentage of the forest area varies from 3.5 to 50, and the area per head of population from .07 to 9.5 acres. Russia, Sweden and Norway may as yet have more forest than they require for their own population. On the other hand, Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Holland, and even Belgium, France and Italy have not a sufficient forest area to meet their own requirements; at the same time, they are all sea-bound countries, and importation is easy, while most of them are under the influence of moist sea winds, which reduces to a subordinate position the importance of forests for climatic reasons.
Intimately connected with the area of forests in a country is the state of ownership—whether they belong to the state, corporations or to private persons. Where, apart from the financial aspect and the supply of work, forests are not required for the sake of their indirect effects, and where importation from other countries is easy and assured, the government of the country need not, as a rule, trouble itself to maintain or acquire forests. Where the reverse conditions exist, and especially where the cost of transport over long distances becomes prohibitive, a wise administration will take measures to assure the maintenance of a suitable proportion of the country under forest. This can be done either by maintaining or constituting a suitable area of state forests, or by exercising a certain amount of control over corporation and even private forests. Such measures are more called for in continental countries than in those which are sea-bound, as is proved by the above statistics.
Supply of Timber—Imports and Exports.—The following table shows the net imports and exports of European countries (average data, calculated from the returns of recent years).
The only timber-exporting countries of Europe are Russia, Sweden, Norway, Austria-Hungary and Rumania; all the others either have only enough for their own consumption, or import timber. Great Britain and Ireland import now upwards of 10,000,000 tons a year, Germany about 4,600,000 tons, and
