A Brief History of Forestry. B. E. Fernow
at the rate of 11⁄2 to 2 per cent. annually.
4. The deficiency is at present supplied by the export countries, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Austria-Hungary, Canada and United States, and these countries themselves also increasing their consumption, are beginning to feel the drain on their forest resources, which are for the most part merely roughly exploited.
5. If we assume a log timber requirement by the 500 million people of 6000 million cubic feet and could secure what France annually produces, namely a little less than 9 cubic feet of such timber per acre, the area supposed to be under forest would amply suffice. But a large part of it is in fact withdrawn from useful production and of the balance not more than 250 million acres at best are as yet under management for continuous production. Hence attention to forestry is an urgent necessity for every industrial nation.
The history of the forest in all forest countries shows the same periods of development.
First hardly recognized as of value or even as personal property, the forest appears an undesirable encumbrance of the soil, and the attitude of the settler is of necessity inimical to the forest: the need for farm and pasture leads to forest destruction.
The next stage is that of restriction in forest use and protection against cattle and fire, the stage of conservative lumbering. Then come positive efforts to secure re-growth by fostering natural regeneration or by artificial planting: the practice of silviculture begins. Finally a management for continuity—organizing existing forest areas for sustained yield—forest economy is introduced.
That the time and progress of these stages of development and the methods of their inauguration vary in different parts of the world is readily understood from the intimate relation which, as has been pointed out, this economic subject bears to all other economic as well as political developments.
At the present time we find all the European nations practicing forestry, although with a very varying degree of intensity. The greatest and most universal development of the art is for good reasons to be found in Germany and its nearest neighbors. Early attention to forest conservancy was here induced by density of population, which enforces intensity in the use of soil, and by the comparative difficulty of securing wood supplies cheaply enough from outside. On the other hand, such countries as the Mediterranean peninsulas by their advantageous situation with reference to importations, with their mild climate and less intensive industrial development, have felt this need less.
Again, the still poorly settled and originally heavily timbered countries of the Scandinavian peninsula and the vast empire of Russia are still heavy exploiters of forest products and are only just beginning to feel the drain on their forest resources; while the United States, with as much forest wealth as Russia, but with a much more intensive industrial development, has managed to reach the stage of need for a conservative forest policy in a shorter time.
From each of the European countries we learn something helpful towards inaugurating such policies, and while, owing to a different historical background and to different political and social conditions, none of their administrative methods and measures may appeal to us, the principles underlying them as well as those underlying their silvicultural methods remain the same; they are applicable everywhere, and can best be recognized and studied in the history of their development.
THE FOREST OF THE ANCIENTS.
Waldgeschichte des Alterthums, by August Seidensticker, 1886, 2 vols., pp. 863, is a most painstaking compilation from original sources of notes regarding the forest conditions and the knowledge of trees, forests and forestry among the ancients. Contains also a full bibliography.
Die Waldwirthschaft der Rœmer, by J. Trurig, collects the knowledge, especially of arboriculture and silviculture, possessed by the Romans.
Forstwissenschaftliche Leistungen der Altgriechen, by Dr. Chloros, in Forstwissenschaftliches Centralblatt, 1885, pp. 8.
Archeologia forestale, Dell’ antica storia e giurisprudenza forestale in Italia, by A. di Berenger, 1859.
The forest was undoubtedly the earliest home of mankind, its edible products forming its principal value. Its wild animals developed the hunter, the chase first furnishing means of subsistence and then exhilaration and pleasure. Next, it was the mast and, in its openings, the pasture which gave to the forest its value for the herder, and only last, with the development into settled communities and more highly civilized conditions of life, did the wood product become its main contribution toward that civilization. Finally, in the refinement of cultural conditions in densely settled countries is added its influence on soil, climate and water conditions.
Although there is no written history, there is little doubt that these were the phases in the appreciation of woodlands in the earliest development of mankind, for we find the same phases repeated in our own times in all newly settled countries.
As agriculture develops, the need for farming ground overshadows the usefulness of the forest in all these directions, and it is cleared away; moreover, as population remains scanty, a wasteful use of its stores forms the rule, until necessity arises for greater care in the exploitation, for more rational distribution of farm and forest area, and finally for intentional reproduction of wood as a useful crop.
Correspondingly forest conditions change from the densely forested hills and mountain slopes during the age of the nomad and hunter to the “enclaves” or patches of field and pasture enclosed by the forest of the first farmers, then follows the opening up of the valleys and lowlands, while the hill and mountain farms may return to forest, and finally, with the increase of population and civilization in valleys and plains, a reduction of the forest area and a decrease of forest wealth results.
1. Forest Conditions.
While we have many isolated references to forest conditions and progress of forest exploitation among the ancients in the writings of poets and historians, these are generally too brief to permit us to gain a very clear picture of the progress of forest history; except in isolated cases, they furnish only glimpses, allowing us to fill in the rest to some extent by guess.
That the countries occupied and known to the ancients, even Spain and Palestine, were originally well-wooded there seems little doubt, although in the drier regions and on the drier limestone soils, the forest was perhaps open, as is usual under such conditions, and truly arid, forestless regions were also found where they exist now. Although it has been customary to point out some of the Mediterranean and Eastern countries as having become deserts and depopulated through deforestation, and although this is undoubtedly true for some parts, as Mount Lebanon and Syria, generalization in this respect is dangerous.
We know, however, that by the 11th century before Christ, in Palestine, Asia Minor and Greece, especially in the neighborhood of thriving cities, the forest cover had vanished to a large extent and building timber for the temples at Tyre and Sidon had to be brought long distances from Mount Lebanon, whose wealth of cedar was also freely drawn upon for ship timber and other structures. Although about 465 B.C. Artaxerxes I, having recognized the pending exhaustion of this mountain forest, had attempted to regulate the cutting of timber, the exploitation had by 333 B.C. progressed to such an extent that Alexander the Great found at least the south slope exhausted and almost woodless.
The destruction by axe and fire of the celebrated forests of Sharon, Carmel and Bashan is the theme of the prophet Isaiah writing about 590 B.C.; and the widespread devastation of large forest areas during the Jewish wars is depicted by Josephus. In Greece, the Persian wars are on record as causes of widespread forest destruction. Yet in other parts, as on the island of Cyprus, which, originally densely wooded, had rapidly lost its forest wealth during Cleopatra’s time through the development of mining and metallurgical works, ship building and clearing for farms, the kings seemed to have been able to protect the remnants for a long time, so that respectable forest cover exists even to date.
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