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]