Woods and Woodlands. 



LECTURE BY ri;OF. WILLIAM H. BREWER, CoNNECiicrr, U.S.A. 



Cuinmniiicated hij Burnd Landnih, Chief of Ike Bureaa of AijricaUure, 



PhiUdeljihia. 

 Savages may live and thrive in a forest-clad country, but civilized man 

 needs something else. For civilization is builfc upon agriculture, and this 

 means tillable soil, open fields and meadows, and sunny pastures. For 

 this, land must be cleared if originally forest-clad, and along with the 

 necessary destruction of trees and wood there inevitably comes waste, 

 until at length new forests must be either planted or old ones protected 

 and fostered. This is not a mere local fact : it is a great law, as true of 

 the Old World as of the New. Most of the countries oi" Europe have gone 

 through a history in this respect much like ours, only that scarcity of 

 timber in some, and anxiety about the future supply in others, began to 

 be felt centuries ago, while we are just beginning to feel it. 



In all European countries from which our ancestors came, and from 

 which we derived our civilization, /br^s/s were in early times legally more 

 than mere woodlands ; they were essentially huntu}(j-(jivunds. While the 

 laws were similar over the most of Europe, those in England will be best 

 to illustrate this. In England the various forest laws were scattered 

 through many documents until they were collected by Manwood, au 

 eminent legal writer, and published in a separate form in lo'JS, entitled 

 " A Treatise and Discourse of the Lawes of the Forrest," a book still an 

 authority on the laws as they then existed. A few extracts may be in- 

 structive to us now : " A Forrest is a certen Territorieof wooddy grounds, 

 fruitfull pastures, priuiledged for wild beasts and foules of Forrest, Chase, 

 and Warren, to rest and abide, in the safe protection of the King, for his 

 princely delight and pleasure. . . . For the preseruacion and continu- 

 ance of which said place, together with the vert and Venison, there are 

 certen particuler Lawes, Priuiledges and Officers, belonging to the same, 

 meete for that purpose, and are only proper unto a Forrest, and not to any 

 other Place." And again he says, " And therefore a Forrest dotli 

 chiefly consist of these foure things, that is to say, of vert, venison, parti- 

 cular lawes and priuiledges, and of certen meet officers appointed for that 

 purpose, to tliend that the same may the better be preserued and kept 

 for a place of recreation and pastime, meete for the royal dignitie of 

 a Prince." The officers chosen to the above work were called foresters, 

 and at first their function was to protect the game and later the wood. 

 'I'his was a very old calling, and in some countries on the Continent was 

 of the character of an hereditary office. Learned genealogists tell us that 

 d thousand years ago there \\ ere no family or surnames, and that they camtt 



