





























WHAT IS A FOREST? 
Repetition is the secret of education. 
Je must again and again present the same 
ibject from different points of view, if 
e will have it understood and appreci- 
ed in all its bearings; especially when 
ie people at large, the laymen, are to be 
ucated in a professional subject, and to 
s made generally intelligent about it. 
ence while the question of what forestry 
1as often been answered in RECREATION 
various ways, there is still need of con- 
ing to explain, as long as so many 
roneous notions are afloat regarding this 
pular subject; as long as there are “city 
resters”; as long as an indiscriminate 
Joodman-spare-that-tree” sentiment dom- 
ates much of the writing in the public 
ss; as long as such things can happen 
the abolishment of our first forestry 
1001, ostensibly because, forsooth, a com- 
ttee of legislators knows better what for- 
involves than the professional men 
f 
The word “forestry” is so modern that 
was not yet recorded in the dictionary a 
arter of a century ago. Even the word 
rest,’ in its present sense, is of quite 
usage. Originally the word was 
itten “voorst,” and was used by the Ger- 
n tribes to denote the property set aside 
the use of the king, or leader, of the 
e, the “Fuerst.” That this property was 
urally, to a great extent, woodlands had 
hing to do with the meaning of the 
‘cd. The main value of this property 
; the game, and as the owners could not 
it for any other purpose, they merely 
srved the right to the chase. Gradually 
right to the chase became a royal pre- 
ative, especially among the Normans; 
the word “forest” became a legal term 
denote a territory, including fields, 
ddlands, pastures, waters, settlements, 
the people themselves living within 
boundaries, on which the king had re- 
yed the right to hunt for himself or 
followers. In other words, a forest 
} what we would now call a game pre- 
Special laws governed the people 
ig within the preserve. The words “af- 
esting” and “disafforesting” were cor- 
onding legal terms, which denoted 
placing of districts under the forest ban 
forest laws declaring them game pre- 
fes, or their release from such restric- 
yhen we read, therefore, of the forests 
Dean, of Windsor, of Epping or of 
FORESTRY. 
EDITED BY DR. B. E, FERNOW. 
It takes 30 years to grow a tree and 30 minutes to cut it down and destroy it, 
Sherwood, where Robin Hood, the forester 
bold, used to ply his trade, it is not the 
natural condition of being woodland, but 
the legal condition of being the king’s 
game preserves that is meant. Foresters 
were nothing but gamekeepers, or police 
officers, to enforce the forest laws; or else, 
as in the case of Robin Hood, a man living 
on the preserve. 
It was only gradually, and in England © 
very lately, that the word forest began to 
assume the meaning of woodland, probably 
as the right to the chase became restricted 
to the woodland portion of the forest in 
its original sense. 
Richardson’s New Dictionary of 1846 de- 
fines a forest still as “a great and privileged 
wood or woody wilderness. Frenchmen 
have generally interpreted it as a place 
whereto access and entry are forbidden by 
the owner unto others; hence it seems that 
privileged fishing, or large waters, wherein 
none but the lords thereof could fish, were 
also termed ‘forests.’ ” 
It is also interesting to note that this 
medieval conception and use of the term, 
which is naturally still recorded in our. dic- 
tionaries, was called into use as late as 
1862, when one of the dukes of Athole, in 
Scotland, instituted a lawsuit against the 
laird of Luke, his neighbor, to restrain him 
from killing deer on his own lands and to 
establish for the duke the right to enter the 
laird’s lands for the purpose, in virtue of 
the duke’s family holding from ancient 
times the position of “forester.” The courts 
decided adversely on the ground of “in- 
nocuous dissuetude” of the forest lands. 
Now the word forest is generally accept- 
ed as denoting a natural condition and as 
synonymous with woodland, but the lexi- 
cographers seem to be uncertain as to the 
distinction between woodland and forest. 
In the German language there are also 
2 words, namely, Wald and Forst. The 
first is the more general term, to denote 
merely the wooded condition, while the 
word Forst contains the idea that this 
woodland is placed under management or 
considered from the standpoint of its use- 
fulness to man. We will do well to accept 
the same distinction and, when we speak of 
forest, have in mind that we are considering 
woodlands with reference to economic ques- 
tions of man, an object of man’s care, no 
matter whether natural, or wild, or planted, 
large or small. Then it becomes easy to 
see that forestry is nothing but that care of 
the woodlands or forests, 
