Forest Treatment. 35 
the royal right of the ban and merely for the avowed 
purpose of protecting the chase. 
Real forest management, however, did not exist, 
the forestariit mentioned in these early times being noth- 
ing but policemen guarding the rights of the kings or 
other owners of hunting rights. The conception that 
wood on the stump was of the same nature as other prop- 
erty and its removal theft had not yet become estab- 
lished : “quia non res possessa sed de ligno agitur’ (wood 
not being a possessed thing), a conception which still 
pervades the laws of modern times. 
The necessity of clearing farm lands for the growing 
population continued even in the western more densely 
populated sections into the 12th and 13th centuries. 
The cloisters were especially active in colonizing and 
making farm land with the use of axe and fire, such 
cloisters being often founded as mere land speculations. 
Squatters, as with us, were a frequent class of colonists, 
and in eastern Prussia continued even into the 17th and 
18th centuries to appropriate forest land without regard 
to property rights. 
The disturbed ownership conditions, which we have 
traced, led also often to wasteful slashing, especially in 
the western territory, while colonization among the Slavs 
of the east led to similar results. In the 12th century, 
however, appear here and there the first signs of greater 
necessity for regulating and restricting forest use in the 
Mark forest and for improvement in forest conditions 
with the purpose of insuring wood supplies. 
In the 12th century, division of the Mark forest begins 
for the alleged reason that individual ownership would 
lead to better management and less devastation. In the 
