FORESTS. 207 



up to the height of ten ; or; eleven feet, and are all in 

 full bloom. The road or path is hemmed in, and the 

 view is completely obstructed. The thistles are so 

 close together, and so strong, that they are perfectly 

 impenetrable. Captain Head, in his journey across 

 the Pampas, says: "it is really possible that an 

 invading army, unacquainted with this country, might 

 be imprisoned by these thistles before they had time 

 to escape from them." We have mentioned these 

 facts to shew the almost universal luxuriance of 

 natural vegetation: generally, this luxuriance pro- 

 duces the most beautiful and majestic objects of 

 the vegetable kingdom, trees. A country with- 

 out wood is always disagreeable ; and thus the 

 inhabitants of bleak regions, possessing no timber, 

 are considered peculiarly unfortunate. On the other 

 hand, the extreme abundance of trees, in many parts 

 of the earth, renders it one of the great labours of 

 man to clear the ground of them, that he may be able 

 to raise food by cultivation. The progress of civiliza- 

 tion has thus a natural tendency to diminish the 

 forests of the world. The Britons, the Gauls, and 

 the Germans, in those states of society which have 

 been described by Caesar and Tacitus, lived almost 

 wholly in the woods, which supplied the principal 

 wants of a rude people; but as the arts of life made 

 advances, through communication with more refined 

 nations, these people permitted the wolves and bears 

 to occupy the forests associated together in towns 

 and cultivated the open country. As population 

 increased, more land was required for culture than 

 the plains afforded ; and then the forests were sub- 

 jected to the axe, and their spontaneous produce was 

 succeeded by regular tillage. This is the progress of 

 man in all woody countries. 



For several centuries the forests of England were 

 much neglected. Many of them were royal domains j 



