HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



3i 



Danish forests, from 4000 to 19,000 in each ; while in 

 a moderately fruitful season the forests of Gottorp, in 

 Slesvig, could supply provender for 30,000 of these 

 unclean creatures, whose gluttonous appetites were 

 thus rendered greatly subservient to the carnal desires 

 of mankind. 



Swine do not, however, like other cattle in general, 

 injure the forest, cropping the sprouting trees only 

 when mast is scarce ; moreover, they plough and 

 sow, as well as reap, burying acorns and beechnuts, 

 and also destroying nests of mice, which are amongst 

 the worst of the forest plagues. Exception was there- 

 fore made in their favour, when the mast was ripe, by 

 several forest-ordinances which forbid the pasturing of 

 cattle in the forest ; as by that of 1S05. The cutting 

 down of beech, oak, and hazel, as trees which bore 

 mast, was also forbidden. 



Of all domestic cattle, goats are the most in- 

 jurious to the forest, having as strong a predilection 

 for branches and young trees as fcr grass. Large 

 flocks of them were formerly kept ; and despite the 

 passing of several ordinances in the fifteenth century 

 and afterwards, their complete exclusion from the 

 forest was not effected till the middle of the sixteenth. 

 Deer, however, thereupon increased all the more, so 

 that the booty secured at a royal hunt, August 1593, 

 amounted to 1600 harts, besides a great number of 

 calves, roes, hares, and foxes. It has always been 

 customary for the Danish peasants to pasture their 

 horses, as well as cows and sheep, in the forest ; and 

 horses, by tearing off the branches, and top shoots of 

 trees, damage the forest far more than cows. During 

 the Middle Ages studs ran wild in several districts ; 

 and subsequently the peasants, from old wont, took 

 a pride in owning more horses than they had any real 

 use for ; and pasturage costing nothing, the number 

 of their horses greatly exceeded that of the royal studs. 

 The custom continued down to the allotment of the 

 commons ; in the severe winter of 1S02-3, flocks of 

 small, hardy animals, belonging to the peasants of 

 North Zealand ranged the forests there, scraping the 

 withered giass from under the ice and snow, and 

 eating the tops of young trees. 



Winter fodder being exhausted, the peasants turned 

 their cattle into the forest in early spring before the 

 grass had grown ; consequently they cropped the 

 budding twigs and top-shoots of trees and shrubs, 

 thereby greatly affecting the rankness, and the form 

 and sanity of its growths. In many places underwood 

 disappeared from amidst the oaks, and both oak and 

 beech and other trees assumed abnormal forms in 

 consequence of the treatment they received. The oak, 

 however, is so tenacious of life that it can bear ill- 

 usage with much more impunity than the beech ; if 

 its top-shoot is bit off for twenty years in succession 

 the young tree will persistently strike forth another, 

 and larger, every spring. But the beech, though very 

 patient under bovine or equine oppression, is more 

 peculiarly affected by it ; transforming itself when 



repeatedly cropped into a low tree or bush, with 

 short, out-spreading branches and twigs, which bear 

 numerous leaves ; thus bearing, in some cases, a 

 resemblance to a clipped yew, but forming, if libe- 

 rated from dental interference, a low-stemmed many- 

 branched tree. The oak more rarely assumes this 

 form, and then, in general, only upon the old stub 

 after a tree has been felled. 



Though cattle gnaw both oak and beech, and 

 perhaps prefer oak leaves to beech, yet they injure 

 the beech most. Open positions and wide grassy 

 spaces are not particularly hurtful to oak, but beech- 

 woods can neither thrive well on greensward nor in 

 an open position. Besides, the cattle protect the oak 

 by consuming the springing beech-plants, which in 

 time, when luxuriant, have usually power to injure 

 most oaks. A muster which took place in one of the 

 forests of about a thousand acres in July 1722, shows 

 how numerously they were grazed ; the number of 

 the various domestic cattle it was found to contain 

 amounting to 131 horses, 109 neat, 140 swine and 93 

 young pigs. Cattle that are sent from open pastures 

 into wet forests are apt to be seized with a sickness 

 caused by eating the grass, which often ends in death ; 

 but it does not affect those which are brought up 

 there. 



The Danish kings in general have been great lovers 

 of sport, and consequently stocked the forests with 

 numerous game ; Christian IV., on a journey from 

 Copenhagen to Horsholm, killed twelve harts with 

 his own hand. Many of the nobles and gentry over- 

 stocked their forests in the same way. Royal studs 

 and the timber axe also conjoined with the wasteful 

 grazing on the common rights of the peasants to 

 impoverish the forests ; which moreover in earlier 

 times had been greatly diminished in area, and were 

 in danger of becoming mere pasture-lands or arable 

 fields. But the mischief had begun to be seen and felt 

 too ; scarcity of timber and firewood became subject 

 of complaint, and a fear lest the land should lose 

 its forests altogether was expressed. In answer to a 

 Government circular issued to the country magistrates 

 in 1760, the mischief was attributed chiefly to the 

 reckless manner in which the peasants exercised their 

 communal rights ; over-stocking with all manner of 

 cattle, and at unseasonable times, cutting promiscuous 

 wood for fences and withy bands to bind the cattle, 

 at any season, with no regard for future growth, and 

 thus yearly destroying thousands of sapling oaks, 

 ash and other trees. 



It was not, however, until 1805 that Government 

 prohibited common grazing in the forests ; stating in 

 a short preamble to the enactment that experience had 

 shown the greatly deteriorating effect upon the forests 

 of fellowship, and also that another cause of deteriora- 

 tion consisted in the improvident felling of timber, 

 especially since the sale of the timber had become a 

 chief speculation in the purchase of landed property. 

 It was therefore ordained that all fellowship in 



