196 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



hundred and fifty square miles the wild browsing quad- 

 rupeds are rarely, if ever, numerous enough in regions un- 

 inhabited by man to produce any sensible effect on the 

 condition of the forest. A reason why they are less inju- 

 rious than the goat to young trees may be that they resort 

 to this nutriment only in the winter, when the grasses and 

 shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat 

 feeds upon buds and young shoots principally in the sea- 

 son of growth. However this may be, the natural law of 

 consumption and supply keeps the forest growth, and the 

 wild animals which live on its products, in such a state of 

 equilibrium as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, 

 and the perpetuity of neither is endangered until man 

 interferes and destroys the balance. 



" When, however, deer are bred and protected in parks, 

 they multiply like domestic cattle, and become equally 

 injurious to trees. ' A few years ago,' says Clav6, ' there 

 were not less than two thousand deer of different 

 ages in the forest of Fontainebleau. For want of 

 grass they are driven to the trees, and they do not 

 spare them. . . It is calculated that the browsing 

 of these animals, and the consequent retardation of 

 the growth of the wood, diminishes the annual product of 

 the forest to the amount of two hundred thousand cubic 

 feet per year, . . and besides this, the trees thus mutil- 

 ated are soon exhausted and die. The deer attack the 

 pines, too, tearing off the bark in long strips, or rubbing 

 their heads against them when shedding their horns ; and 

 sometimes, in groves of more than a hundred hectares, not 

 one pine is found uninjured by them.' Revue des deux 

 Mondes, Mai 18G3, p. 157. 



" Vaupell, although agreeing with other writers as to 

 the injury done to the forest by domestic animals and 

 by half-tamed deer which he illustrates in an inter- 

 esting way in his posthumous work, The Danish Woods 

 thinks, nevertheless, that at the season when the mast is 

 falling, swine are rather useful than otherwise to forests of 

 beech and oak, by treading into the ground, and thus sow- 



