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.