56 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
perceyve the chapytres and contentes in the same, 
and by reason of ofte redynge he may waxe perfyte 
what sholde be done at all seasons. For I lerned 
two verses at gramer scole, and those be these :— 
“ Gutta cavat lapide non vi, sed sepe cadendo: 
Sic homo sit sapiens non vi, sed sepe legendé.”’’ 
How many schoolboys since then have had 
to learn the same old story, that the constant 
dropping of water weareth away a stone, and 
that a man may acquire much knowledge by 
constant reading? 
The course of affairs with regard to the great 
woodlands of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales can- 
not be traced with anything like the same pre- 
cision as in England, nor are they probably 
anything like so interesting. According to Skene 
(Celtic Scotland, vol. iii. p. 283), ‘what had origi- 
nally been the waste land of the tribe became 
known as the forest, and became dissociated from 
the cultivated land of the thanage. It either 
formed the subject of a separate grant, or was 
retained as a royal forest.’ 
These royal forests comprised large tracts of 
land subject to the ‘ Forest Laws,’ which were 
nothing like so severe as those that had been 
