EAELY HISTORY OP FORESTS. 3 



'The barbarous Germans who invaded the Empire, 

 accustomed to live in the forest, and worshippers of sylvan 

 deities, had a sympathetic feeling for the forests of Gaul. 

 The Salic Law, the law of the Lombards, protected the 

 forests under pain of fine or forfeiture ; and it cost nearly 

 as dear to fell a tree as to fell a man. If the forests of 

 Gaul were diminished by the wars of the Romans the 

 devastations of the fourth and fifth centuries restored to 

 them large spaces lost then to cultivation. So at a later 

 period, after the passage of the Normans and the Saracens, 

 thick forests covered the cantons of the wealthy colonies 

 which had been previously cleared of wood, and there are 

 still found among the pines in some of the woods of 

 Provence stumps of olive trees planted by the ancient 

 Phonecians.' 



Thus far M. Cezanne. Subsequently the settlement of 

 the Normans, or Nomiands, in France, gave a new aspect 

 to the treatment of the forests ; and everything connected 

 therewith has an interest for the student of Forest Science. 



On the rise of the Carlovignian dynasty in the middle 

 of the eighth century it extended its dominion to the North 

 till it came into collision with the Scandinavian tribes of 

 Denmark. These maintained their independence, and in 

 a short time thereafter there begam piratical expeditions, 

 fitted out by the people living in Denmark, in Norway, 

 and in Sweden. The object of the expeditions undertaken 

 by the Vikings may at first have been robbery and booty, 

 but the ultimate result was their conquering and seizing 

 territories and dominions. 



The expeditions fitted out in Sweden seem to have been 

 directed mainly against the Finns, and the Livonians and 

 Estonians, and Russia, in which country their influence 

 had much to do with the civilisation and advancement 

 and influence of the State of Novogorod, which was founded 

 by thera. The Danes directed their expeditions more 

 against the southern shores of the Baltic, and the northern 

 shores of the German Ocean, or North Sea, and the noi-th 



