202 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



It is interesting to note that the first trace of forest protection 

 consists in that afforded to sacred trees and groves. We read 

 of such groves in the Bible and in Tacitus, and they still exist 

 in India, especially in the hill districts of Assam. Nowhere 

 perhaps in the world in these modern days is the original 

 meaning of the sacred grove more picturesquely shown than 

 among the Mundas of Chota-Nagpur, in whose settlements a 

 sacred grove of sal-trees, a remnant of the primeval forest 

 spared by the woodman's axe, is left as a home for the spirits, 

 and in this hallowed place offerings to the gods are made. 

 Interference with them is a capital crime. 



With Christianity, however, comes a crusade against the holy 

 trees and sacred groves, but in spite of stringent measures taken 

 to eradicate such places, within the last two centuries there were 

 old men in Gothland who would go to pray under a great tree 

 as their ancestors had done in their time; and to this day the 

 sacrificial rite of pouring milk and beer over the roots of holy 

 trees is said to be kept up on out-of-the-way Swedish farms. 

 Names like Holy oake and Holy rood record our own old 

 memories of the holy trees and groves, memories long lingering 

 in the tenacious peasant mind ; while it was a great and sacred 

 lime tree or linden tree with three stems, standing in South 

 Sweden, which gave the name to the family of Linnaeus. 



8. Before proceeding with some of the myths and legends 

 connected with our own trees, it might be interesting to mention 

 the part which trees played in old mythological stories connected 

 with the origin of living organisms on the earth, and with the 

 problem of how the sky and the earth were supposed to be 

 supported. 



To early man, looking up to the heavens through the leafy 

 forest canopy, it must have seemed that the sky rested on the 

 tops of the trees. Then, as it seemed to recede into a remote 

 distance, arose the fable of one particular tree which joined 

 heaven and earth, as of the mountains which the clouds touched 

 in other cases. We hear of a tree which, at the beginning of 

 things, grew up above all trees till it touched the sky and 

 darkened the sun and moon. Such a world-tree is that of the 

 Polynesians — sixty miles high — or that other which forms a 

 ladder to heaven. On its different sections are various repulsive 

 insects which people dare not pass. Those who can pass reach 

 the clear branches above from which, as they sway to and fro 



