224 PROTECTION OF WOODLANDS. 



CHAPTER II. 



PROTECTION AGAINST MISUSE OF EIGHTS OR SERVITUDES. 



109. Definition, Origin, and various Disadvantages of Eights of 

 User in Forests. 1 



In many instances, and particularly where Crown or State 

 Forests are concerned, the woodlands are not the absolute pro- 

 perty of the owner, but are very frequently burdened with certain 

 rights of user or servitudes, by virtue of which the rights of 

 ownership can only accrue after certain stipulated conditions have 

 been carried out for the benefit of third parties. 



Such servitudes are legally of the nature of real property, so 

 far as they relate to the compulsory doing of certain Acts, or the 

 not doing of certain other Acts, by the occupying owner for the 

 time being, whose title is in fact only dominium limitatum. 



From the manner in which our tenure of land in Britain has 

 developed from the early feudal system, and from the generally 

 clear titles that, rightly or wrongly, have long been held to go 

 with the larger landed estates, the servitudes existing over forest 

 land in this country are altogether slight and infrequent as com- 

 pared with those existing throughout the greater part of the 

 Continent of Europe, where the present communal forests, and 

 servitudes over woodlands held by the nobles or the State, have 

 grown naturally out of a mixture of the early tribal and the 

 feudal system. 



Throughout most of Europe they date from early times, in 

 which the products of the woodlands were of comparatively little 

 exchangeable value, and usually had their origin in agreements innde 

 between barons and their villeins, and perhaps the inhabitants of 

 petty towns in the vicinity, or in privileges granted in return for 



1 For this paragraph, and the preceding and following ones, the Translator is 

 practically responsible, as the text in the original referred solely to German condi- 

 tions. Trans. 



