Note 304 — Chapter III · (continued 4)

According to Clavé (Études, p. 159), the net revenue from the forests of the state in France, making no allowance for interest on the capital represented by the forest, is two dollars per acre. In Saxony it is about the same, though the cost of administration is twice as much as in France; in Würtemberg it is about a dollar an acre; and in Prussia, where half the income is consumed in the expenses of administration, it sinks to less than half a dollar. This low rate in Prussia is partly explained by the fact that a considerable proportion of the annual product of wood is either conceded to persons claiming prescriptive rights, or sold, at a very small price, to the poor. Taking into account the capital invested in forest land, and adding interest upon it, Pressler calculates that a pine wood, managed with a view to felling it when eighty years old, would yield only one eighth of one per cent. annual profit; a fir wood, at one hundred years, one sixth of one per cent.; a beech wood, at one hundred and twenty years, one fourth of one per cent. The same author (p. 335) gives the net income of the New forest in England, over and above expenses, interest not computed, at twenty-five cents per acre only. In America, where no expense is bestowed upon the woods, the annual growth would generally be estimated much higher.