TASTURE. 525 



or ponies. [In India, elephants, camels and buffalos may be 

 added to the above list. — Tr.] Among these, horned cattle do 

 the least damage, for they prefer grazing on the ground, and as 

 long as there is sufficient grass and herbage, will not attack the 

 woody plants. The sheep likes dry pasture, and prefers short 

 grass among woody plants to a strong, luxuriant growth of grass, 

 and especially prefers fodder which has grown unshaded by 

 trees ; it attacks woody plants much more freely than horned 

 cattle. If there are no dry pastures, sheep nibble the trees in a 

 similar way to red deer. The goat is absolutely destructive to 

 the forest, and no other beast shows such a preference for woody 

 plants, which it will attack, however abundant the supply of grass 

 may be. This greedy beast, often indeed indispensable to the 

 poor peasant, bites off the buds, young shoots, and leaves of 

 almost every woody plant within its reach ; no forest is too 

 remote for it, and no mountain too lofty, no patch of woody 

 growth beyond its reach, and it even bears-down fairly tall 

 saplings with its fore legs, so as to nibble their juicy tops. 

 Forests in the Alps, the South Tyrol and Southern Switzer- 

 land, which were formerly so well wooded, and those of Spain, 

 Greece, Sicily, &c., have been destroyed chiefly by herds of goats ; 

 even up to the present time a limit has not been put to their 

 ravages.* 



Young cattle are always more harmful to the forest than older 

 beasts ; even calves form no exception to this rule, nibbling 

 woody plants partly out of playfulness, partly to assist dentition. 

 Whilst a flock of full-grown sheep may be driven without much 

 danger through a beech or spruce reproduction-area well stocked 

 with grass, as is sometimes done in the Harz, this can never be 

 the case with lambs. 



The condition of the animals as regards fodder is of immense 

 importance to the well-being of the forest. Hungry cattle, of 

 any kind, will attack woody growth much more readily than 

 those which are well fed ; if, therefore, there is only scanty 

 herbage in a forest, the damage done by either horned cattle or 

 sheep may be considerable. It is on this account that the half- 

 starved flocks of sheep driven annually from Lombardy to the 



"* Compare the excellent pamphlet on grazing hy goats hy Dr. Fuiikhauser 

 Berne, 1887. 



