FORESTS AND CIVILISATION.

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as high interest and consideration as its natural beauties. What would mankind have been without forests? A question, truly, of most extensive scope and import. Take the naked savage: he wants shelter, he gets it in the forest; he wants food, the forest is full of animals on which he can live, and is fertilised by streams of crystal water; he wants weapons, and the forest supplies him both with bows and arrows, and means to make them more deadly by poison, if desired; he wants clothing, and the skins of the forest-animals supply it in profusion; and if he wants a safe retreat from enemies, the recesses of the forest supply a secure asylum. Naked and defenceless as the savage appears, yet to him nature, in the creation of forests, has been more bountiful than to any other creature. The forest is man's primitive abode.

But soon man acquires new wants. He wants to cross a river, and he makes his boat or coracle, as our forefathers did, of the skins of the wild animals the forest supplies. He wants beasts of burden, and he breaks in the horse and the cattle which he finds wild in the forest. He wants a four-footed companion in the chase, and the forest gives him the faithful dog. Gradually he gets the idea of agriculture, and then he realises the old eastern fable of the Man and the Forest : the man had an axe, and requested the forest as a favour to supply him with a handle; which was done, and the forest fell.

The forest fell, but cities rose; the hunter became a farmer, and the plough that prepared the land for the seed was made of trees that had for years lived on the ground they were now made to tear into furrows. But to pursue the progress of man step by step in the use he has made of the forest, would be to write the history of civilisation. The reader can fill up the picture from the day when the savage broke a branch off the yew to make a bow, to the day when the civilised man cut down timber enough to build a merchant-ship to voyage round the world.

Your

A curious remark was lately made by a clever French writer, L. F. Marny, in a work on forests, that "when civilised men take up their abode in forests, they relapse into a state of semibarbarism." This remark, though somewhat paradoxical, is, to a certain extent, true. Take, for example, the backwoodsmen of America. genuine backwoodsman seldom settles quietly down on the land he has cleared, but sells it to some new-comer less disposed to encounter the hardships of frontier life, and the pioneer goes farther to the west, to renew his struggle with the gigantic trees, the Indians, and the wild beasts of the forest. The western hunters and trappers very

soon assimilate themselves to the red Indians around them; and we are told that, in the forests of Touba in Siberia, the Russian, the German, or the Tartar who settles there soon becomes as rude in costume and in manner as the Kirghises, the natives of the forest.

In all ages the forests have been the refuge of the bold, the outlawed, the daring, and the desperate part of society. Few countries cannot boast of some "brave outlaw," like our own Robin Hood, who lived in glorious independence with his merry men, "all under the greenwood tree." At the present day the jungles of Hindostan and the forests of Ceylon and Madagascar are inhabited by races who are outcasts from society, and live by any pursuit that does not require honesty and industry.

From time immemorial forests have been devoted more or less to religious purposes. The Temple of Jupiter Ammon rose up in the midst of a grove of palm-trees, and the oracles of Greece were situated in groves. Many of the religious rites of the northern nations of Europe were performed in the forests; and in all countries we find traces that, at various times, homage, and even worship, have been paid to particular trees. Perhaps it was from the same feeling in which this idea originated that the idea of peopling those forests with imaginary and supernatural beings originated. The Greeks created their dryads, hamadryads, fauns, satyrs, &c., and with them peopled their groves and woods. The abode of our own fairies has always been in woods, and their gambols have always been under some widespreading tree. In the woods, too, their tricks upon poor mortals, as related in the most veracious legends, have always been played; for proof of which our reader who may be incredulous is referred to the Midsummer Night's Dream.

But all forests have not the same history. It is remarked by a very acute writer, that "there is, after all, a dash of the savage even in the most civilised man ;" and the forest-hunting habits of the savage lived deeply rooted for centuries among the kings and nobility of feudal Europe.

The reason why kings should have possession of forests as a royal privilege is thus stated by that accurate, but somewhat pedantic, old writer, John Manwood. We will not annoy our readers with perfect quotation, as that would involve the use of black-letter and obsolete spelling.

"The king or sovereign governor of a realm is the most excellent and worthiest part or member of the body of the commonweal next unto God. The king ought not to be under man, but under God and

RIGHT OF ENGLISH KINGS TO FORESTS.

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the law, because the law doth make him a king. And as he is the head and most excellent part of the body of the commonweal, so is he also, through his governance, the preserver, nourisher, and defender of all the people, being the rest of the same body. And by his travails, study, and labours they enjoy not only their lives, lands, and goods, but all that ever they have besides in rest, peace, and quietness. The king, by his watch and diligent care, doth defend and keep every man's house in safety; his labour doth maintain and defend every private man's pleasure and delight. So that even as the head of a natural body doth continually watch and with a provident care still look about for the safety and preservation of every member of the same body, even so the king, being the head of the body of the commonweal, doth not only continually carry a watchful eye for the preservation of peace and quietness at home amongst his own subjects, but also to preserve and keep them in peace and quietness from any foreign invasion; for which cause the laws do attribute to him all honour, dignity, prerogative, and pre-eminence; which prerogative doth not only extend to his own person, but also to his possessions, goods, and chattels. AND THEREFORE, in respect to his continual care and labour, the laws do allow to the king, amongst many other privileges, to have his places of recreation or pastime wheresoever he will appoint."

Hence arose the necessity of preventing the cutting down of certain forests, the fixing of their boundaries, the making of laws for the due preservation of the game they contained, and the planting of new forests in situations more convenient than the old. Out of these circumstances have grown the conservation as forests of certain woodland districts in England, under peculiar laws and management, and all invested, from their connexion with the sports, pastimes, and often superstitious fears of the ancient Kings, Lords, and Commons of this country, with a considerable amount of interesting historical, traditionary, and legendary lore. To give an account generally of these forests, their history, their associations, and their traditions, as well as particularly of the various kinds of trees they contain, is the object sought to be attained in this work.

CHAPTER II.

ENGLISH FORESTS IN THE DAYS OF THE BRITONS, ROMANS, SAXONS, AND NORMANS.

THERE

HERE can be little doubt that at an early period the whole of our island was covered with forests or marshes; and further, that this period was not much earlier than the first Roman invasion. It is true, the authority of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph in the twelfth century, is rather opposed to such a statement; for if we are to believe him, Britain was settled and civilised, and the City of New Troy or London built, about ten centuries before the birth of Christ, by Brutus, a hero from the Trojan war, and from whom it is alleged our country takes its name. The good old bishop's work is doubtless very valuable, especially to poets like Shakspeare, who found in it the materials for his powerful drama of King Lear; but its authority in a historical point of view is more than doubtful. But even supposing all his wonderful narrative to be correct, admitting that Britain was a highly civilised country at the very time that Solomon was building the Temple at Jerusalem, still it is just possible, and history has many a page to confirm it, that during the lapse of so many centuries the people went back into barbarism, and the country into its primitive state of forest, marsh, and moorland.

Julius Cæsar is a more reliable authority than the old St. Asaph Bishop. The stern, direct Roman soldier soon found out by experience what British towns and forests were; and he has described them with forcible truth. The only parts of England where the people could be said to lead a settled life, when the Romans came, were along the south coast, where agriculture was in some degree attended to, and where there were several towns, inhabited chiefly by traders, who carried on the traffic between Britain and the continent. The interior, we are told, was one great, horrid forest; and Cæsar says, with quiet contempt, "A town among the Britons is nothing more than a thick

THE DRUIDS IN ENGLISH FORESTS.

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wood fortified with a ditch and rampart, to serve as a place of retreat against the incursions of their enemies." Strabo, in describing a British town, says: "Forests were the only towns in use among them, which were formed by cutting down a large circle of wood, and erecting huts within it, and sheds for cattle." Again, though the ancient Britons seem to have made no regular divisions of the country, yet they applied special names to certain ranges of forest. Thus the present Berkshire was formerly completely covered with a forest, called by the Britons Berroc, from which the shire takes its name. In Warwickshire there is at this day a district called Arden, which was formerly in the forest of that name (the word 'Arden,' in fact, being the British word for a forest); and there can be little doubt that that forest extended right across England, including what we now call the forests of Dean, Sherwood, &c.

But, during the time of the Britons, the forests of England were not only useful as affording means of subsistence and a secure retreat from an enemy, but they were also devoted to the most sacred purposes of religion. "The Druids," says Hume, "practised their rites in dark groves or other secret recesses; and in order to throw a greater mystery over their religion, they communicated their doctrines only to the initiated, and strictly forbade the committing of them to writing, lest they should at any time be exposed to the examination of the profane vulgar. Human sacrifices were offered among them [in huge colossi, says Cæsar, of osier twigs, into which they put men alive, and setting fire to them, those within expire amid the flames]; the spoils of war were often devoted to their divinities; and they punished with the severest tortures whoever dared to secrete any part of the consecrated offerings. These treasures they kept in woods and forests, secured by no other guard than the terrors of their religion." Groves of oak were more especially preferred by the Druids; and oak branches were invariably used in all their religious ceremonies. According to some writers, their name was derived from the oak, which in old British or Celtic is Derw. For the mistletoe they had also great veneration, and cut it from the oak at the beginning of a new year with great and imposing religious ceremonies. The most minute, and apparently the most accurate, description of this ceremony is that given by Pliny (book xvi. chap. 44). He says, "The Druids hold nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided it be an oak. Therefore they choose solitary groves containing no trees but oaks; nor do they perform any ceremonies without the branches or leaves of this tree, Indeed, whatsoever they find growing to or upon an oak