CHAPTER I 



Woods, Forests, & 



Forestry in 



Ancient & Modern Times 



ONE has only to search back far enough in 

 order to arrive at a time when the greater 

 portion of the globe still bore its natural cover- 

 ing of primeval forest in some shape or another. 

 Except where the growth of trees was physically 

 impossible, either through the intense rigour of 

 arctic cold or the extreme aridity of tropical 

 and subtropical deserts, the early dawn of man's 

 dominion over all the beasts of the earth must 

 have found the habitable portion of the earth's 

 surface clad with tree-forest, varying in its 



