Forest Treatment. 37 



The necessity of clearing farm lands for the growing 

 population continued, even in the western, more 

 densely populated sections, into the 12th and 13th 

 centuries. The cloisters were especially active in 

 colonizing and making farm land with the use of axe 

 and fire, such cloisters being often founded as mere 

 land speculations. Squatters, as with us, were a 

 frequent class of colonists, and in eastern Prussia 

 continued even into the 17th and 18th centuries 

 to appropriate forest land without regard to property 

 rights. 



The disturbed ownership conditions, which we have 

 traced, led also often to wasteful slashing, especially 

 in the western territory, while colonization among 

 the Slavs of the Eastern sections led to similar results. 

 In the 12th century, however, here and there appear 

 the first signs of greater necessity for regulating and 

 restricting forest use in the Mark forest ,and for im- 

 provement in forest conditions with the purpose of 

 insuring wood supplies. 



In that century, division of the Mark forest begins 

 for the alleged reason that individual ownership 

 would lead to better management and less devasta- 

 tion. In the 12th and 13th centuries also, stricter 

 order in the fellings and in forest use was insisted 

 upon in many places. In the forest ordinances of 

 the princes and barons, which, of course, have always 

 reference to limited localities, we find prescriptions 

 like the following: The amount to be cut is to be 

 limited to the exact needs of each family and the 

 proper use of the wood is to be inspected; the timber 

 is to be marked, must be cut in a given time and be 



