THE LOWER GRINDELWALD GLACIER, 
SWITZERLAND, WITH A GLIMPSE OF 
THE COMMUNAL FOREST IN THE 
FOREGROUND 
these ancient rights were eliminated from the 
state owned forests. But perhaps, from its 
bearing on the topic now under discussion, 
it may be in order briefly to summarize how 
such rights became established. They were 
for the most part, as have been said, an out- 
growth of the feudal system. 
In theory there was not a little that com- 
mends itself under that method of govern- 
ment. But its weaknesses outnumbered its 
good features and led to abuses which when 
finally they came to be corrected set in mo- 
tion forces that are at work even to the pres- 
ent day. Under the feudal system the com- 
mon people belonged to the land. In return 
for the protection which they received from 
the baron, or count, or local prince and his 
fighting men, the people contributed to him a 
certain percentage of their labor and of their 
crops. To secure better protection the peo- 
ple lived in walled towns centering about the 
castle, the fields,outside being held more or 
less in common, while the forest was thought 
of as a place primarily devoted to hunting, in 
which the game was strictly reserved for the 
(64) 
. War, 
count or baron and his friends. But as time 
went on it often became necessary to make 
concessions to the people, notwithstanding the 
fact that in many places they were gradually 
sinking. from the status of freemen into that 
of serfs. Some of these concessions took the 
form of privileges to graze cattle, to run 
swine in the forest, or to take wood for do- 
mestic and other use. Gradually these usages 
became prescriptive rights and so finally it 
came about that the owner of the forest 
found it burdened by so many servitudes that 
he had only in part the say as to what he 
could do with his own property. 
Coming down to recent times we find that 
the servitudes in the forest had become vest- 
ed in the recognized citizens, the land hold- 
ers, of given communities. When these rights 
came to be extinguished 50 to 75 or more 
years ago, these persons either were bought 
off for a lump sum; or more often were given 
a solid block of forest land in exchange for 
their right to graze cattle or take wood over a 
larger area. The blocks so designated are 
the communal forests of today. Necessarily, 
there were all sorts of variations in the ne- 
gotiations but in general this was what hap- 
pened. 
Where communal forests originated from 
the results of a war, it was usually those 
towns that craftily or legitimately were able 
to retain possession of the forest land of 
which the former owners had been dispos- 
sessed, that benefited most. 
So much for history. As to the reasons for 
the desirability and necessity for communal 
forests, we find the answer in two words, fuel 
and transportation. As conditions became 
more settled in the Huropean countries and 
as population increased, the accessible for- 
ests were naturally the first to begin to show 
the effects of exploitation. With the difficul- 
ties of transport it became evident that the 
local wood supplies must be conserved and 
continued. Especially was this true with re- 
gard to fuel wood. This accounts for the 
prevalence of beech in the communal forests 
of south Germany and also in some of those 
in Switzerland. 
Precisely the same economic factors were 
at work in America 80 years ago, when Em- 
erson in the ‘Trees of Massachusetts” pub- 
lished about 1840, argued for the protection 
of forests in that state lest the people suffer 
from a fuel famine. We have only to recall 
the ‘““‘Wood Using Campaign”’ throughout the 
eastern states in the coal scarcity during the 
to be reminded of how big a factor 
transportation is in getting a bulky crop like 
fuel wood moved even a comparatively short 
distance. 
THE 
SIHLWALD 
But to get to specific examples of European 
town and city torests. Unquestionably the 
most néted forest of this class in forestry an- 
nals is the city forest of Zurich, Switzerland, 
