In what follows, many analogies may possibly be traced between his work as a landowner and his last two campaigns in the Reichstag, as well as earlier indications of his bent without expressly directing attention to them in each instance. Before his time, for example, the beautiful woods were cut down and transformed into bad arable land, which, in spite of all the theory upon which these proceedings were based, yielded no returns or only very poor ones. The present owner of Varzin, who has been careful to remedy this mistake, has also in other places planted fir trees in light sandy soil, which previously grew nothing but bushes and heather. If Nature be not disposed to assist his work, he compels her to do so, a thing which, by the way, as Imperial Chancellor, he has repeatedly done in other fields, viz., in those of political and economic reform. He forces Nature’s will to bend before his own by skilful strategy and stubborn perseverance. In several places I saw fir plantations in which the young trees were of different heights, nearly three-fourths of the plants having failed in the first year, owing to the sand and wind, while scarcely half of those planted in the second year ever throve. Perseverance, however, and persistent replanting got over the difficulty, and now the third and fourth years’ seedlings gave every promise of as healthy and fine a plantation as any of those in the neighbourhood occupying a more sheltered situation and better soil. The forest is at present rather a plantation than a game preserve. There has, however, been a considerable improvement in the latter respect also during the decade 1866-77. Formerly deer were very scarce here, indeed had almost disappeared. But the new owner of the Varzin forest, in co-operation with his neighbours on all sides, succeeded in maintaining a close season, and now there is a fair number along the course of the Wipper and the Grabow and on the wooded heights, where a stag is also met with occasionally, as well as wild boar. The herons, large numbers of which formerly decimated the fish in the ponds, have been mostly destroyed or have left a district no longer safe for them. It would appear that efforts to check the devastation caused by the otter have not yet met with the desired success.