PROTECTION OF FOREST BOUNDARIES. 221 



at the same time, be utilised for bearing other marks, like any 

 sign or the initials of the proprietor, or numbers relative to com- 

 partments, administrative divisions, &c., is, of course, a matter 

 purely of administrative convenience. 



107. The Erection of Boundary Marks. 



The affixation of boundary marks over a whole estate is termed 

 its demarcation. This always has for its object the determina- 

 tion of boundaries where they have not already been definitely 

 laid down, or where any doubt on the subject may have arisen. 

 On the Continent any such doubts or difficulties are practically 

 settled by Government land surveyors, but throughout Britain the 

 machinery of the Civil Courts is the recognised and only legal 

 channel for settling any questions relative to the proprietorship 

 over any portions of land at issue. The first necessary opera- 

 tion in demarcating land should, of course, be to erect permanent 

 boundary pillars at all the angles, and then, whenever necessary, 

 to set up intermediate stones between such main angular points as 

 cannot be seen from each other respectively ; in place of having 

 angular lines on the heads of these latter, they should have graved 

 on them a straight line in the direction followed by the 

 boundary. 



When the permanent demarcation of any hitherto undefined 

 boundary takes place, the recognised agents of both parties con- 

 cerned should be present at the delimitation and the erection of 

 the permanent boundary marks, in order that a fruitful source of 

 subsequent disputes may be obviated ; and whenever any periodical 

 revision of the marks is deemed necessary, all parties interested 

 personally in the matter should take care to be represented. 1 



In the olden times it was not unusual to bury broken glass, or 

 bricks, or rubble of any sort, beneath boundary marks, so as to 

 have some means of determining their original position should 

 there be any reason to suspect that they had been surreptitiously 

 removed ; but with the modern appliances of surveying, these 

 antiquated safeguards are now no longer necessary. 



For extensive forest tracts, such as woodlands owned by the 



1 The Riding of the Marches in the border counties of Scotland, and the Beating of 

 the Boundaries in many parts of England, are survivals of the old customary revisions 

 that have come down to the present day, though often more as a holiday pageant 

 than anything else. Trans. 



