CHAPTER V. 



POLISH HISTORY. 



WHILE it is forestry to which my attention has been 

 chiefly given in my studies of Poland, with such a 

 history as that country has, it is natural that this should 

 receive some attention from the student of forest science. 



According to the Abbs' des Fontaines, in his History of 

 the Revolutions of Poland from the foundation of that Mon- 

 archy to the death of Augustus II a work published early 

 in the last century, in which the author followed Duglos- 

 sius, a canon of Cracow, who composed a history of 

 Poland in Latin, which, though valuable, has defects which 

 the Abbe* des Fontaines in his work endeavoured to remedy, 

 while he also adduced additional details from the works 

 of Thuanus, which are of considerable celebrity : 



' If we may credit their own historians, their first prince 

 was a descendent from Japhet, the son of Noah. They 

 give him the name of Lecht, and declare that he came 

 from Dalmatia. This prince left his throne to his son 

 Wissimir, who founded the city of Dantzig. We dis- 

 cover no traces in history of any actions that were per- 

 formed by the posterity of these two first kings of Poland ; 

 and it is a void which fiction itself has never attempted to 

 fill up. It only supposes that the nation, after the extinc- 

 tion of the royal family, assembled for the election of new 

 masters. The nobility were on the point of proceeding to 

 this choice, when the people, who had long been harassed 

 with the tyranny of their last kings, demanded an aboli- 

 tion of the regal government, that they might no longer 

 depend on the caprice of one man. 



' The great lords, who were allured with the hopes of 

 sharing all the honours of dominion, were easily induced 



