Читать книгу A Brief History of Forestry - B. E. Fernow - Страница 20

Although all this supervision was probably more or less lax, the possibility of more general and incisive influence was increasing because the personnel to whom such supervision could be intrusted was at last coming into existence.

The men in whose hands at the beginning of the 18th century lay the task of developing and executing forest policies and of developing forestry practice came from two very different classes. The work in the woods fell naturally to the share of the huntsmen and forest guards, who by their practical life in the woods had secured some wood lore and developed some technical detail upon empiric basis. These so-called holzgerechte Jaeger (woodcrafty hunters) prepared for their duties by placing themselves under the direction of an established huntsman, who taught them what he knew about the rules of the chase, while by questioning woodchoppers, colliers, etc., and by their own observation the knowledge of woodcraft was acquired.

At the head of affairs stood the so-called cameralists or chamber officials, men who had prepared themselves by the study of philosophy, law, diplomacy and political economy for the positions of directors of finance and State administration. Rather ignorant of natural science, and without practical forestry knowledge, their efforts were not always well directed. They deserve credit, however, for having collected into encyclopædic volumes the empiric knowledge of the practitioners or Holzgerechten, and for having elaborated it more or less successfully. In this work they were joined by some of the professors of cameralia and law at the universities.

By the middle of the 18th century the hunters had so far grown in knowledge and education as to be able to produce their knowledge in books of their own. Quite a literature developed full of acrimonious warfare of opinions, as is the rule where empiricism rules supreme.

Notable progress, however, came only when hunting was placed in the background and more or less divorced from forest work.