FOREST OFFENCES. 57 



driving carts over boundary marks, through ditches, down 

 embankments, etc. The number of cases which may occur is 

 80 great, that to draw up a complete Hst here is impossible. 

 In many cases no legal offence is connnitted which is punish- 

 able criminally ; but the doer of the damage is liable to make 

 reparation. 



In the case of wilful damar/c, the motives may be wantonness, 

 revenge, selfishness, even superstition.* 



Damage of this kind includes : — peeling the bark from 

 standing trees, girdling, cutting-off leading shoots, lopping 

 branches or exposed i-oots ; lopping branches from trees yielding 

 mast, or from cone-bearing trees in order to facilitate the 

 removal of their fruit ; wilful damage to boundary marks, 

 fences, forest nurseries, or other forest appurtenances. 



J?. JUisa/)/)ropri(//ion . 



Under this heading is understood illegal appropriation of 

 forest property still belonging to the forest owner. 



In most systems of law "theft" and " larceny " refer to 

 "personal" or "moveable" property: such as a watch, fire- 

 wood in a stack, a log, or a beam ; and there is (or may be) a 

 difficulty about prosecuting cases of lopping, or the offence of 

 cutting a standing or growing tree, bush, or sapling ; gener- 

 ally, therefore, the forest law (if there is one) will specially 

 provide for these cases, and will leave " theft " of forest pro- 

 duce (stored), cut timber, etc., to the ordinary law.t Where 

 there is no special forest law, the cutting of standing trees 

 would at any rate constitute " wilful damage " or "mischief." 



Simjyle misappropriation (in the general sense of the term) 

 is unaccompanied by any damage to the forest, so that no loss 

 of increment, no impoverishment of the soil, results from the 

 offence, but merely the loss of the property illegally taken 



• About thirty years ago a deodar forest in Jaunsar, in the N.-W. Himalayas, 

 was deliberately burned to propitiate the goddess of small-pox. 



t In India, a technical distinction is drawn between "theft "and misappro- 

 priation," for which see " Forest Law" (pp. 118, 420), It is provided, however, 

 in the Indian law, that though "theft" can only be of '-moveable" property, — 

 and a standing tree is not such, — still the act of cutting and severing the free 

 from the soil may make the object moveable and also effect the moving with 

 dishonest intention that is necessary to constitute ■' llitft. ' 



