338 DESTEUCTION OF FOEESTS BY GOVERNMENTS. 



Governments and military commanders liave at different pe- 

 riods 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 measm-es practiced by both Juhus Csesar 

 and the Gauls in the Roman war of conquest against that people^ 

 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,t as neces- 



quantity of grain and roots grown on ground ploughed and cultivated a» 

 regularly and as laboriously as any other. 



The 280,000,000 bushels of oats raised in the United States in 1870, and for 

 the most part fed to the 7,000,000 horses — as it is only since that date that so 

 large a proportion of the oat-harvest has been used directly as food for man — 

 the potatoes, the turnips, and the maize employed in fattening the oxen, the 

 sheep, and the swine slaughtered the same year, occupied an extent of ground 

 which, cultivated by hand-labor and with Chinese industry and skill, would 

 probably have produced a quantity of vegetable food equal in alimentary 

 power to the flesh of the quadrupeds killed for domestic 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 arti- 

 ficial, 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 Forets de la Gaule, pp.. 

 S-5, and Becquerel, Des CUmats, etc., pp. 301-303. 



In 1664 the Swedes made an excursion into Jutland and felled a consider- 

 able extent of forest. After they retired, a 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, Bogens Indvandring, p. 35, and Notes, p. 55. 



f 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 



