58 ECONOMICS OF FORESTRY. 



the mortals never fell the trees, but where they fall 

 from age when their time has come. His tree and 

 woodland nymphs, originating in springs, seem to 

 suggest the suspected relation of forests and springs. 

 The legend of Erichthonios most beautifully hints 

 at the dependence of agriculture and forest cover : 

 when, by the felling of a holy oak, he has of- 

 fended the dryads, Ceres, the patroness of agricul- 

 ture, is asked to send one of their number to the 

 mountains of the Camasus to fetch Famine, who 

 takes hold of Erichthonios and kills him. 



These relations, thus darkly hinted at in earliest 

 times, became more clearly recognized by philo- 

 sophical writers. While Aristotle, in his " Na- 

 tional Economy," points out that an assured supply 

 of accessible wood material is one of the necessary 

 conditions of existence for a city, Plato, in his 

 " Civitas," writes of the " sickening of the country " 

 in consequence of deforestation. The Roman 

 " Twelve Table Laws," the organic law of the 

 republic, recognizes the necessity of forest protec- 

 tion, and Cicero, in his second Philippica, designates 

 as enemies to the public interest those engaged in 

 forest devastation. Laws prohibiting forest de- 

 struction in the mountain forests of the Apennines 

 were generally enforced in the early middle ages ; 

 as, for instance, in Florence, where deforestation 

 within one mile of the summit of the Apennines 

 was forbidden, and it was only about the first part 

 of the eighteenth century that these wise provisions 



