636 PASTURE IN RELATION TO FORESTS. [Feb. 



provided with a covering of fallen leaves or fir species, to the com- 

 plete exclusion of grass. The same holds of woods in the middle 

 period of their growth. As to the youngest woods, although until 

 they have joined and interlaced their branches they are too richly 

 provided with grass, yet what they require is protection and care, 

 and not disturbance by pasturing cattle. Unfortunately in practice 

 things are quite otherwise. 



The Crown lands on the Austrian side of the river Leitha have 

 enjoyed orderly forestal conditions most of them for over a century, 

 and there, it may be granted, things are much better, forest pasture 

 being almost a matter of the past, or, where it still exists, being 

 relegated to heights above the timber line, or confined to pure 

 pasture land which has ceased to be forest. Notwithstanding 

 this it may be generally asserted of all provinces under the holy 

 crown of St. Stephen, that even to-day almost the whole of their 

 woods, the State forests scarcely excepted, are pastured, and that, 

 moreover, a considerable part of them are quite overburdened with 

 pasture. 



I may be allowed, perhaps, to remark in the first place upon the 

 cattle which are driven into the woods, before I proceed to describe 

 more minutely the sad results of this injudicious mixture of forestry 

 and pasture. 



In nearly all woods, horses and oxen, the draught cattle of the 

 forest labourers, are pastured singly. Cows, too, are driven in in 

 herds, and numbers of swine, especially in moist years (when acorns 

 and beech-nuts are plentiful), are pastured in the woods. But the 

 sheep are everywhere by far the most numerous. Fortunately goats 

 are by law altogether excluded from the forests. 



Horses, oxen, and cows are endurable M'hen not in excessive 

 numbers. And so long as the young woods are unpastured, until 

 they have grown higher than the cattle can reach, it is probable 

 that these cattle must be occasionally admitted even into the most 

 improved forests. The pasture of swine, too, is, with good reason, 

 acknowledged to do more good than harm when proper places are 

 chosen for it. In old oak woods, where the soil is often trodden quite 

 fast like an earthen floor, the swine turn it up and loosen it, making- 

 it again sensitive for the seeding. They also in the process bury 

 quantities of acorns and other seeds in the earth in a bed almost 

 prepared for their germination. They consume, finally, endless 

 quantities of vermin, such as cockchafers, maggots, caterpillars, mice, 

 and the rest, and are thus useful to a considerable extent. But 

 sheep, on the contrary, are for the woods an unmitigated plague. 

 Sheep, moving in closely packed herds, do as much harm by tread- 

 ing the life out of tender young plants, as they do by nibbling, and 



