3048 DESTRUCTION OF FORESTS BY GOVERNMENTS. 
Governments and military commanders have at different 
periods deliberately destroyed forests by fire or the axe, because 
they afforded a retreat to robbers, outlaws, or enemies, and this 
was one of the hostile measures practised by both Julius Czesar 
and the Gauls in the Roman war of conquest against that peo- 
ple. It was also resorted to in the Mediterranean provinces of 
France, then much infested by robbers and deserters, as late as 
the reign of Napoleon I., and is said to have been employed by 
the early American colonists in their exterminating wars with 
the native Indians.* 
In the Middle Ages, as well as in earlier and later centuries, 
attempts have been made to protect the woods by law, as 
industry and skill, would probably have produced a quantity of vegetable 
food equal in alimentary power to the flesh of the quadrupeds killed for do- 
mestic use. Hence, so far as the naked question of amount of aliment is 
concerned, the meadows and the pastures might as well have remained in the 
forest condition. It must, however, be borne in mind that animal labor, if 
not a necessary, is probably an economical, force in agricultural occupations, 
and that without animal manure many branches of husbandry could hardly 
be carried on at all. At the same time, the introduction of machinery into 
rural industry, and of artificial, mineral, and fossil manures, is working great 
revolutions, and we may find at some future day that the ox is no longer 
necessary as a help to the farmer. 
* For many instances of this sort, see Maury, Les Yoréts de la Gaule, pp. 3-5, 
and BECQUEREL, Des Climats, etc., pp. 301-803. In 1664 the Swedes made 
an incursion into Jutland and felled a considerable extent of forest. After 
they retired, 2 survey of the damage was had, and the report is still extant. 
The number of trees cut was found to be 120,000, and as an account was taken 
of the numbers of each species of tree, the document is of much interest in 
the history of the forest, as showing the relative proportions between the 
different trees which at that time composed the wood. See VAUPELL, 
Bigens Indvandring, p. 35, and Notes, p. 55. 
| Stanley, quoting Selden, De Jure Naturali, lib. vi., and Fabricius, Cod. 
Pseudap., V. T., i. 874, mentions a noteworthy Hebrew tradition of uncertain 
date, but unquestionably very ancient, which is one of the oldest proofs of a 
public respect for the woods. 
“A Hebrew tradition attributes to Joshua ten statutes, containing precise 
rerulations for the protection of the property of every tribe and of every head 
of a family against irregular depredations. Small quadrupeds were allowed to 
pasture in dense woods, not in thin ones; but no animal could feed in any 
forest without the consent of the proprietor of the soil. Every Hebrew might 
