EARLY HISTORY OF FORESTS. $ 



Romans, a military and an administrative people, familiar 

 with the abstract idea of a res publica, or commonwealth, 

 had left the forests undivided ; but they had regulated, 

 or reduced to rule, the use to be made of them, as they 

 had done also in regard to the waters : they had an 

 Administration of Forests and Roads, provincia at calles et 

 silvas, with special officers, saltuarii, or foresters. The 

 barbarian conquerors, on the contrary, proportioned 

 amongst themselves the soil of which they became pro- 

 prietors, or seigneurs, and appropriated the forests. In 

 the beginning, the traditions of indivisibility and of com- 

 munism were persistent ; and the ancient colonists, now 

 become serfs, preserved at first the right to the use of the 

 forests, now seignorial or royal. But under the Carlo- 

 vignians the feudal system became organised; and the 

 proprietorship of forests became nearly absolute, especially 

 in the provinces of the North. In this part of France, 

 the land of common-right, there came to prevail at length 

 as a maxim, nulle terre sans seigneur, there must be 

 no land without a landlord, or lord of the manor, that is 

 to say, in other words, all common or undivided lands, 

 and thus the forests belong to the seigneur or lord of the 

 manor. In virtue of this principle the seigneur defended 

 the forest with jealous care, and he even extended it at 

 the expense of the cultivated ground, under pretext of the 

 right of the chase or of a warren.' 



M. Cazanne remarks in a foot-note : ' In the Latin of 

 this epoch, foresta signified reserved property, or guarded 

 chase ; what we to-day call forest, would then be called 

 sylva : ' and thus is it still in Britain, in English legal 

 phraseology. 



The so-called game laws belong to the category of forest 

 laws, and all of these relate to the chase. In an old book, 

 published first in the winter of 1598-1599, entitled "A 

 Treatise on the Laws of the Forest and of the Purlieu, 

 wherein is declared not only these laws, but also the 

 original and beginning of forests ; what a forest is in its 

 own proper nature, and wherein the same doth differ from 



