About the middle of the 18th century great activity began in the literary field. This was carried on by two distinct classes of writers, namely, the empiricists and the cameralists. The former--the _holzgerechte Jäger_--were the “practical” men of the woods who proved in many directions most unpractical, and exhibited in their writings, outside of the record of their limited experience, the crassest ignorance. The cameralists were educated in law and political economy and, while lacking practical contact with the woodswork, tried to sift and systematize the knowledge of the empiricists, and to secure for it a tangible basis. Some five or six of the empiricists deserve notice as writers; the first and most noted of them was _Doebel_ (_Heinrich Wilhelm_) whose book, _Jägerpraktica_ (hunters’ practice), published in 1746, remained an authority until modern times for the part referring to the chase. The author was pre-eminently a hunter, who worked in various capacities in Saxony, a self-taught man with very little knowledge of natural history. Being familiar mainly with broadleaf forest he condemned planting and thinning, but described quite well for his time the methods of survey, subdivision, estimating and measuring, and the methods of selection forest and coppice with standards. His ignorance is characterized by his reference to the “sulphurous and nitric elements of the soil” as cause of spontaneous forest fires. Opinionated and one-sided, like many so-called practical men, he came into polemic controversies with other practitioners, not less opinionated, among them _J. G. Beckmann_, who worked in another part of Saxony, where, having to deal with coniferous woods, he had gathered different experiences from those of Doebel. Although he was himself poorly educated, especially in natural sciences, he complained of the ignorance of the foresters, and in his book (_Anweisung zu einer pfleglichen Forstwirthschaft_, 1759), used for the first time the word _Forstwissenschaft_ (forest science), and insisted upon the necessity of studying nature. He may be credited with having really advanced forest organization by devising the first good volume division method, and silviculture by advocating the method of clearing followed by sowing. The first practical forester with a university education was _J. J. Büchting_, who worked in the Harz mountains. His main interest lay in the direction of survey, division and orderly utilization. He did not, however, make any striking advance, except that he gave equal standing to both planting and sowing. The two most eminent practitioners of the period, however, active during the middle of the century, were _Johann Georg von Langen_ and his pupil, _Hans Dietrich von Zanthier_, both of noble family, and better educated than most of their contemporaries, and both engaged in the organization and management of Harz mountain forests, namely, those of the Duke of Brunswick and of the Count of Stolberg-Wernigerode.