CHAPTER XXni 

 TITLES 



There are certain legal difficulties in securing sound titles to 

 woodland tracts which make the subject of special interest to all 

 woodland owners, present and prospective. Briefly stated these 

 are due to two factors. In the first place woodlands in the 

 United States have not been of great value in the past so that 

 their owners have neglected to have them properly marked and 

 described. In the second place, and of even more importance, 

 the definition of acts of possession is vague so that there is no 

 general agreement as to what an owner must have done to prove 

 conclusively that he owns a tract. 



A traet of land may be marked in various ways. The com- 

 monest method is by fences, either of rails, stones or wire. But 

 large tracts of woodland are seldom fenced on account of the 

 expense of fencing as compared with the advantages of preventing 

 grazing. It is usually cheaper in a woodland grazing country to 

 fence the relatively small areas of tilled and cleared land and let 

 the stock roam at wiU. Should an owner desire to prevent graz- 

 ing trespass in a community of this kind the entire burden of 

 such an innovation would be upon him. His neighbors -would 

 give him neither legal protection nor sympathy. Such primitive 

 communities think of the woods first of all as a common pasturing 

 ground and cannot be expected to have developed a sense of pri- 

 vate property rights in timberland. In fact the use of woodland 

 for forest production is much more recent historically than the 

 pasturage use and runs counter therefore to many inherited preju- 

 dices dating back to the time when the woodlands were used in 

 common for grazing and what httle timber and firewood a primi- 

 tive community needs. Even the development of private rights 

 to the timber does not break down the feeHng of common owner- 

 ship in pasturage. Consequently, it is rare that woodlands are 



