164 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
appeared, and large estates became formed, the local lords or 
seigneurs gradually acquiring the virtual possession of all the 
lands originally held by those then subject to his orders or under 
his protection, but thenceforth only held on feudal tenure. Even 
as early as 1355 there were many complaints made that the 
forests were being cleared, while in 1543—the same date as 
Henry VIII.’s great Statute of Woods—an edict for the first 
time declared that the preservation of private woodlands was a 
matter of public utility, and submitted them not only to the 
jurisdiction, but also to the supervision, of the Masters of Woods 
and Waters; and this principle remained in force down to the 
Revolution, in 1789. 
During the sixteenth century fears were entertained (as also in 
England) about the maintenance of future supplies of timber, 
and orders were given for allowing one-third of the royal 
coppices to grow up into highwoods. But during the seventeenth 
century vast clearances were made, and many woodlands were 
turned into wastes. Despite Colbert’s ordinance of 1669 pre- 
scribing a definite method of treatment, the clearance often went 
so far as to interfere greatly with the natural water-storage and 
the regulation of torrents, as was particularly noticeable in the 
case of the Rhone, the largest of all the Alpine rivers. 
During the Revolution a wholesale clearance of the forests 
went on, in much the same way as seems now to be happening 
in Russia, and it is said that the law of 1791, which organised a 
new administration for the State Forests, but left each proprietor 
free to do what he liked with his woodlands, led to the destruc- 
tion of about 957,000 acres of the private woodlands within 
twelve years. Between 1798 and 1803, drafts of the Code forestier 
were introduced and amended, the ordinance of 1669 being 
partially re-enforced, the communal woods being submitted to 
the same management as the State Forests, the clearance of 
private woodlands being regulated, and a commencement being 
made with the planting of the barren sand-dunes of Gascony. 
But although Dugied had, in 1819, written convincingly about 
the destruction of pastures by the torrents sweeping down from 
denuded areas,—although, in 1824, the forest administration had 
been again reorganised and a forest school instituted at Nancy, 
and the Code forestier had been finally voted in 1827,—and 
although Surell had, in 1841, published his celebrated work on 
Alpine torrents, nothing was done until 1860 to cope with the 
