16 The Forest of the Ancients. 



Forest management proper, i. e., regulated use for 

 continmty, except in coppice, seems nowhere to have 

 been practiced by the ancients, although silviculture 

 in artificial plantations, or rather arioricuUure, was 

 well established and even attempts at replacement in the 

 selection forest seem to have occasionally been made. 

 Not only were many arboricnltural practices of to-day 

 well known to them, but also a number of the still un- 

 settled controversies in this field were then already sub- 

 jects of discussion. 



The cullirig system of taking only the most desirable 

 kinds, trees and cuts, which has characterized until 

 recently our American Ixtmbering methods was naturally 

 the one under which the mixed forest was utilized. Fire 

 used in the pasture woods for the same purposes as with 

 us effectively prevented reproduction in these and de- 

 stroyed gradually the remnants of old trees. 



Only where for park and hxmting purposes some care 

 was bestowed upon the woodland, was reproduction pur- 

 posely attempted, as, for instance, when an underwood 

 was to be established for game cover in a hunting park. 



The treatment of the coppice and methods of sowing 

 and planting were weU understood in spite of the lack 

 of natural sciences. Whatever forestry practice existed 

 was based on empirical observations and taught in the 

 books on agriculture as a part of farm practice. 



For Greece, we find, besides what can be learned from 

 the historians Herodotus and Xenophon and from the 

 natural history of Aristotle, the first work on plant 

 history and wood technology, if not forestry, in 18 vol- 



