PROTECTION AGAINST ANIMALS. 
321 
they would take place in different zones, it would afford indefi¬ 
nitely an annual crop of firewood and timber. 
The duties of the forester do not end here. It sometimes 
happens that the glades left by felling the older trees are not 
sufficiently seeded, or that the species, or essences , as the 
French oddly call them, are not duly proportioned in the new 
crop. In this case, seed must be artificially sown, or young 
trees planted in the vacancies. 
One of the most important rules in the administration of 
the forest is the absolute exclusion of domestic quadrupeds 
from every wood which is not destined to be cleared. ISTo 
growth of young trees is possible where cattle are admitted to 
pasture at any season of the year, though they are undoubt¬ 
edly most destructive while trees are in leaf.* 
* Although the economy of the forest has received little attention in 
the United States, no lover of American nature can have failed to observe 
a marked difference between a native wood from which cattle are excluded 
and one where they are permitted to browse. A few seasons suffice for 
the total extirpation of the “ underbrush,” including the young trees on 
which alone the reproduction of the forest depends, and all the branches 
of those of larger growth which hang within reach of the cattle are 
stripped of their buds and leaves, and soon wither and fall off. These 
effects are observable at a great distance, and a wood pasture is recognized, 
almost as far as it can be seen, by the regularity with which its lower 
foliage terminates at what Ruskin somewhere calls the “cattle line.” This 
always runs parallel to the surface of the ground, and is determined by the 
height to which domestic quadrupeds can reach to feed upon the leaves. 
In describing a visit to the grand-ducal farm of San Rossore near Pisa, 
where a large herd of camels is kept, Chateauvieux says: “ In passing 
through a wood of evergreen oaks, I observed that all the twigs and 
foliage of the trees were clipped up to the height of about twelve feet 
above the ground, without leaving a single spray below that level. I was 
informed that the browsing of the camels had trimmed the trees as high 
as they could reach.”— Lullin de Chateauvieux, Lettres sur Vltalie , p. 113. 
The removal of the shelter afforded by the brushwood and the pendu¬ 
lous branches of trees permits drying and chilling winds to parch and cool 
the ground, and of course injuriously affects the growth of the wood. But 
this is not all. The tread of quadrupeds exposes and bruises the roots of 
the trees, which often die from this cause, as any one may observe by fol¬ 
lowing the paths made by cattle through woodlands. 
21 
