NOTES ON SOME FOREIGN FORESTS 



By CHARLES E. BESSEY 

 Professor of Botany in University of Nebraska 



I HAVE never traveled strictly as a 

 forester, any more than I have as 

 a botanist only, or as a simple sight- 

 seer or a mere "globe-trotter." When I 

 travel I like to be on the lookout for 

 everything that comes along, whether it 

 be botanical, zoological, geological, agri- 

 cultural, anthropological, economical, or 

 comical. Yes ; I enjoy the latter, and 

 must confess to keeping my eyes con- 

 stantly on the lookout for the comicali- 

 ties of travel, and I am sure that much 

 of my continued enjoyment of travel 

 is due to this relaxation. So I manage 

 to see a good deal of my surroundings 

 when I take a run through a new coun- 

 try, and it is in this way that 1 have 

 picked up some things about the forests 

 of the Old World. 



Many years ago I made the acquaint- 

 ance of an English chemist, who much 

 later invited me to visit his country 

 place in the edge of Epping Forest, a 

 few miles northeastward from London. 

 Of course, I went and had the pleasure 

 of driving out into the famous old for- 

 est. Originally, this was a tract of 

 about 60,000 acres of a notable forest 

 growth, covering an area from eight to 

 ten miles in length (north and south) 

 and from less than a mile in width to 

 near two miles. Here were formerly 

 some gigantic trees, one oak (0. robnr} 

 having a diameter of nearly nine feet. 

 But. alas. Englishmen were formerly as 

 careless of their forests as Americans 

 have been, and this great, public tract 

 was despoiled of many of its finest trees, 

 and even the land was stolen, until pub- 

 lic sentiment demanded that the rem- 

 nant at last should be saved. Yet it 

 was not until 18/1 that these ravages 

 were stopped by an act of parliament, 

 which has saved for posterity a tithe 

 of the great tract, no longer a stately 

 forest, but an open glade with here and 



there a tree, or a group of trees, and 

 more rarely a denser forest mass. And 

 yet I enjoyed my visit to this old for- 

 est, for although mostly despoiled of its 

 trees, and with its area reduced through 

 the rapacity of unauthorized land- 

 seekers, it is still a witness to the fact 

 that the people will not allow unlimited 

 destruction of the public domain. It 

 took the English public a long time to 

 wake up to the fact that this great for- 

 est was being destroyed, just as it has 

 taken a long time for the American pub- 

 lic to realize that their forests were 

 being ruthlessly destroyed. 



West of London, at Kew, is another 

 old forest worthy of a long journey to 

 see. A long time ago the kings and 

 lords used to delight to rest, or hunt, 

 or carouse in the forests at Kew and 

 near-by Richmond. With the fear of 

 the royal displeasure before them, de- 

 spoilers were kept from destroying the 

 trees or stealing the ground, and so one 

 may find here in the edge of the great 

 city dense forests that seem never to 

 have suffered from vandal axmen. It 

 seemed strange, indeed, to be able to 

 stroll, as I did, out among the old trees 

 until I reached a solitude as absolute 

 as that one finds in the Selkirk forests 

 of the great Northwest. I sat under 

 an enormous beech, and could scarcely 

 realize that I was so near the greatest 

 city in the world, with its century-old 

 buildings, its treeless streets, and its 

 noisy, restless throngs of tired, anxious 

 people. A part, now, of the Royal Bot- 

 anical Gardens at Kew, this forest may 

 well stand as long as the world endures. 

 Here oak trees, now a century or two 

 old, may live on until old age claims 

 them. Here young trees, now mere 

 whips, may grow to be giants, and in 

 their turn they, too, will pass into the 

 decline of old age and drop their limbs 



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