Une légende forestière. - Le Tire et Aire.

International audience

anglais. A FOREST MYTH - THE " TIRE ET AIRE " - This work was wrotten by Eugène Reuss (1847-1926) who was lecturer in second for the lectures on the forest management at the Ecole Nationale des Eaux et Forêts from 1880 to 1889.Reuss, Alsatian by origin, was quite master of the german language ; he devoted a part of his works to get the forets management and the forest organisation of the german countries known. Let us quote specially: Study on the forest experimentation in Germany and in Austria in Annales de la Science agronomique, 1884; The Spessart Forest, in Annales de la Science agronomique, 1896; The Forest teaching in Austria and in Bavaria, Annales de la Science agronomique,1885. The Baron of Seckendorf, Revue des Eaux et Forêts, 1887; The Forest Management in Saxony (on the pseudonym of Reaumont in Revue des Eaux et Forêts, 1885; The Qualified Selection System, report on the work by Tichy « Derqualifizierte planterbetrieb, Munich, 1891, », etc. In 1896 Reuss published a work on the International Forest Exhibition of 1884 in Edinburgh. Reuss is died leaving unfinished a voluminous manuscript on the question of the " Tire et Aire " (system of clear — cutting by successive compartments leaving 6 to 8 standards per acre). It is known that this point out currently the chief method of forest management used by the french foresters on the " AncienRégime ". The study of Reuss is built on the knowledge of numerous texts of archives, concerning specially the famous forest of Fontainebleau that he managed from 1897 to 1911 and from 1914 to 1918, and on the conscientious and methodic abstracts of the old forest works, specially of the collections of the regulations of the XVII° century. This manuscript was revised, often curtailed, sometimes completed by Mr. Blais, inspecteur des Eaux et Forêts, à Nancy, who, besides, gave an introduction and a conclusion. This study includes 3 book: Book I. — The author, in a kind of autobiography, indicates how he came to doubt the classic position of the problem of the" Tire et Aire ". He does so a serious criticism of the authors who preceded him and gives the first complete account of the Great Reformations of the forest of Fontainebleau. Book II. — The author scrutinizes the different forms of the expression " Tire et Aire ". It is one of the most important parts of the book. A philological and historical analysis leads him to distinguish the " Tire et Aire " common age or tire et aire wood cutter from the " Tire et Aire location ". In the first case the " Tire et Aire " gives to the wood cutter the obligation for cutting in following and for making ground clean. In the second case, it is equivalent to a rule of location of fellings. This last case assumes also modalities. If you laya stress on the word " Tire ", you are led to the " Tire et Aire contiguity " which is equivalent to the prescription of marking two successive fellings in following, from place to place. If, on the contrary, you lay a tress on the word " Aire ", that is to say,on the idea of empty space, you are led to the " tire et aire intensity " which can be expressed by the rule of removing all together, at the time of the felling, the greater part of the growing stock. The " Tire et Aire intensity " is then alike the clean felling. Book III. — These distinctions been done, Reuss examines the notion of " tire et aire " in general texts and in ones peculiar to some forests. He reviews so very suggestively our old forestbills. Amongst the results of this important study, it is right to point out essentially, that the old method of high forests management does not include the prescription of felling from place to place. The reality was much more compliant, much more shaded, and it is wrongfully that the famous ordonnance of Colbert 1669 was made to mean that it ordered the " Tire et Aire " as a method of forest management. It is a very good exemple of scientific method which is given by the author when he concludes: " The myth sprung from that the expression" "Tire et Aire "was used from immemorial time in various respects; from that the authors have often involved these respects between them and have not attentively read the text where they were; lastly from that the mistake committed by authors of note have been generally speaking, transcribed, with eyes shut, in the worksof their sucessors. "It is right to point out that the professor Huffel in his famous works on the forest history, had already criticized, very earnestly, the silly and as all of a lump, way, in which the old french sylviculture was fancied.The researchs of Eugène Reuss, on this point, undertaken before the ones of Gustave Huffel and drawn out during all hislife bring, on their posthumous form, something new. The french forest history, in order to be known in an adequate manner, will require many general or regional monographies. Eugène Reuss contributed by this work to light some dark recesses of our forest past time. The publication of that important general monography put to the disposal of the seekers a tool of first value.