Early Forest Control. 467 



The first sawmill in the New World was erected in 

 1631 in the town of Berwick, Maine, and the first 

 gang saw, of 18 saws, in 1650 in the same place,* 

 while, before that time, masts and spars, handmade 

 cooperage stock, clapboards and shingles formed com- 

 monly parts of the return cargoes of ships. By 1680, 

 nearly 50 vessels, engaged in such trade, cleared from 

 the Piscataqua River. The ordinances on record 

 which were issued at the same early times by the 

 town governments of Exeter (1640), Kittery (1656), 

 Portsmouth (1660), and Dover (1665), restricting 

 the use of timber, remind us of the early European 

 forest ordinances; they were probably not dictated by 

 any threatening deficiency of this class of material, 

 but merely intended to secure a proper and orderly 

 use of the town property. 



The appointment of a Royal Surveyor of the Woods 

 for the New England colonies in 1699, and the pen- 

 alties imposed in New Hampshire (1708) for cutting 

 mast trees on ungranted lands ($500 for cutting 

 24-inch trees), and in Massachusetts (1784) for cutting 

 White Pine upon the public lands ($100), were prob- 

 ably also merely police regulations, to protect prop- 

 erty rights of the Crown or commonwealth. That 

 this last move was in no way conceived as a needed 

 conservatism is proved by the fact that two years later 

 the Legislature of Maine devised a lottery scheme for 

 the disposal of fifty townships; and 3,500,000 acres 

 were disposed of in this way during the twelve years 

 following the war. Altogether the States sacrificed 

 their "wild lands" at trifling prices. 



* See Forestry Quarterly, vol. IV, p. 14. 

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