CHAPTER I. 



FOREST CONSERVATION. 



AGAIN and again, within the last five hundred years, 

 attempts have been made to arrest the destruction of 

 forests. When kings and nobles were hunters, and, though 

 they needed not to do so, lived to hunt the beasts of the 

 forest, cruel and disgraceful sanguinary laws were enacted 

 for the conservation of the forests, as a means of preser- 

 ving the game for these men to have the pleasure, and a 

 monopoly of the pleasure, of killing them. Upwards of 

 200 years ago the famous saying of Colbert, France perira 

 en faute des Bois ! was caught up and re-echoed far and 

 near. In England, again and again, an endeavour more or 

 or less earnest was put forth to prevent the destruction of 

 our woods. In the beginning of the present century Lord 

 Nelson raised a warning voice like to that of Colbert ; 

 and the echo of this has been heard in our day ; it is 

 modified indeed by circumstances, but the ground-note is 

 the same, From India, from the United States of America, 

 from Canada, from Astraulasia, and from both the southern 

 and the northern extremities of Africa, as in one place and 

 another it was perceived by observant patriots that the 

 destruction of forests was going on too fast, and was being 

 carried too far, has the voice of warning been heard. 



In Russia, with its apparently interminable forests, a 

 calculation has been made of the cubic measurement of 

 the annual production of wood by growth in all the forests 

 of the Empire perhaps it would be more correct to speak 

 of it as an estimate, as only a proximate result could be 

 expected ; and an estimate of how much is annually con- 

 sumed, in yielding firewood, and wood for the cabinet- 

 maker and the carpenter, and timber for buildings and 



