312 FOEESTS OF ITALY. 



The Eastern Alps, the "Western Apennines, and the Maritime' 

 Alps retained their forests much later ; but even here the want 

 of wood, and the injury to the plains and the navigation of the 

 rivers by sediment brought down by the torrents, led to legisla- 

 tion for the protection of the forests, by the Republic of Yenice, 

 at various periods between the fifteenth and the nineteenth cen- 

 turies,* by that of Genoa as early at least as the seventeenth ; and 

 both these Governments, as well as several others, passed laws 

 requiring the jproprietors of mountain-lands to replant the woods. 

 These, however, seem to have been little observed, and it is gen- 

 erally true that the present condition of the forest, in Italy, is 

 much less due to the want of wise legislation for its protection 

 than to the laxity of the Governments in enforcing their laws. 



It is very common in Italy to ascribe to the French occupa- 

 tion under the first Empire all the improvements and aU the 

 abuses of recent times, according to the pohtical sympathies of 

 the individual ; and the French are often said to have prostrated 

 every forest which has disappeared within this century. How- 

 ever this may be, no energetic system of repression of abuses, 

 or of restoration of the forests, was adopted by any of the Itahan 

 States after the downfall of the Empire, and the taxes on forest 

 property, in some of them, were so burdensome that rural muni- 

 cipahties sometimes proposed to cede their common woods to the 

 Government, without any other compensation than the remission 

 of the taxes imposed on forest-lands, f Under such circum- 



names of mediaeval towns derived from abete, acero, carpino, castagno, faggio, 

 frassino, noce, pino, querela, and other names of trees. 



* See A. de Berenger's Saggio Storico della Legislazione Veneta Forestale, 

 Venezia, 1863, and the same author's erudite Giurisprudenza Forestale, Ven- 

 ezia, 1858. Index, Venezia, 1863, by far the most learned and exhaustive 

 •work which has ever appeared on the social history of the forest. 



"We do not find in the Venetian forestal legislation much evidence that geo- 

 graphical arguments were taken into account by the lawgivers. 



According to Hummel, the desolation of the Karst, the high plateau lying 

 north of Trieste, now one of the most parched and barren districts in Europe, 

 is owing to the felling of its woods, centuries ago, to build the navies of Ven- 

 ice. " Where the miserable peasant of the Karst now sees nothing but bare 

 rock swept and scoured by the raging Bora, the fury of this wind was once 

 subdued by mighty firs, which Venice recklessly cut down to bmld her fleets."" 

 — Physische Oeographie, p. 33. 



f See the Politecnico for the month of May, 1863, p. 334 



