Bernhard Fernow - A Brief History of Forestry.

Out of religious conceptions and priestly shrewdness arose church property in farms and forests among the Indian Brahmans, the Ethiopians and Egyptians, as also among Greeks and Romans.

It appears that the oriental kings were exclusive owners of all unappropriated or public forests. This was certainly the case with the princes of India and of Persia, and such ownership can be proved definitely in many other parts, as in the case of the forests of Lebanon, of Cyprus, and of various forest areas in Asia Minor.

That in the Greek republics the forests were mainly public property seems to be likely; for Attica, at least, this is true without doubt.

While the first Roman kings seem to have owned royal domains, which were distributed among the people after the expulsion of the kings, the public property which came to the republic as a result of conquest was in most cases at once transferred to private hands, either for homesteads of colonists, or in recognition of services of soldiers and other public officers, or to mollify the conquered, or by sale, or for rent, not to mention the rights acquired by squatters. The rents were usually farmed out to collectors ( publicani ) or to corporations formed of these. Livy, however, mentions also State forests in which the cutting was regulated, probably by merely reserving the ship timber.

That occasionally single cities and other smaller municipal units owned forest properties in common seems also established.

Private forest properties connected with farm estates existed in Ethiopia, in Arabia, among the Greeks and among the Romans at home as well as in their colonies. Especially pasture woods ( saltus ) connected with small and large estates ( latifundia ) into which probably most forest areas near settlements were turned, are frequently mentioned as in private ownership; but also other private forests existed.

The institution of servitudes or rights of user ( usus and usus-fructus ) and a considerable amount of law regarding the conditions under which they were exercised and regarding their extinguishment were in existence among the Romans in the first centuries of the Christian era.

Restrictions in the use of woods were not entirely absent, but with the exception of reserving ship timber in the State forests, they refer only to special classes of forest.

In the frontier forests reserved for defensive purposes, timber cutting was forbidden. And in the holy groves set aside by private or public declaration no wood could be cut thereafter, being in the latter case considered nobody’s property but sanctified and dedicated to religious use ( res sacra ), and whoever removed any wood from them was considered a “patricide,” except the cutting be done for purposes of improvement (thinnings) and after a prescribed sacrifice.

With the extension of Christendom the holy trees and groves became the property of the emperors, who sometimes substituted Christian holiness for the pagan, and retained the restrictions which had preserved them. Thus the cutting and selling of cypress and other trees in the holy grove near Antioch, and of Persea trees in Egypt generally (which had been deemed holy under the Pharaos) was prohibited under penalty of five pounds gold, unless a special permit had been obtained.

In Attica as well as in Rome the theory that the State cannot satisfactorily carry on any business was well established. Hence, the State forests were rented out under a system of time rent or a perpetual license, the renters after exploiting the timber usually subletting the culled woods merely for the pasture, except where coppice could be profitably utilized. The officials, with titles referring to their connection with the woods, as the Roman saltuarii or the Greek hyloroi (forestguards) and villici silvarum , the overseers, both grades taken from the slaves, had hardly even police functions.

Forest management proper, i. e. , regulated use for continuity, except in coppice, seems nowhere to have been practiced by the ancients, although arboriculture in artificial plantations was well established and occasionally even attempts at replacement in forest fashion seem to have been made deliberately. Not only were many arboricultural practices of to-day well known to them, but also a number of the still unsettled controversies in this field were then already subjects of discussion.

The culling system of taking only the most desirable kinds, trees and cuts, which until recently has characterized our American lumbering methods was naturally the one under which the mixed forest was utilized. Fire used in the pasture woods for the same purposes as with us effectively prevented reproduction in these, and destroyed gradually the remnants of old trees.

Only where for park and hunting purposes some care was bestowed upon the woodland, was reproduction purposely attempted, as, for instance, when in a hunting park an underwood was to be established for game cover.

The treatment of the coppice and methods of sowing and planting were well understood in spite of the lack of natural sciences. Whatever forestry practice existed was based merely on empirical observations and was taught in the books on agriculture as a part of farm practice.

Silviculture was mainly developed in connection with the coppice, which was systematically practiced for the purpose of growing vineyard stakes, especially with chestnut ( castanetum ), oak ( quercetum ), and willow ( salicetum ), while the arbustum denoted the plantings of trees for the support of grapes, and incidentally for the foliage used as cattle feed, still in vogue in modern Italy.

This planting of vine supports was done with saplings of elm, poplar and some other species; by pollarding and by a well devised system of pruning, these were gradually prepared and maintained in proper form for their purpose.

The coppice seems to have been systematically managed in Attica as well as in Italy in regular fellings; the mild climate producing sprouts and root suckers readily without requiring much care, even conifers (cypress and fir) reproducing in this manner.

The oak coppice was managed in 7 year rotation, the chestnut in 5 year, and the willow in 3 year rotation.

Yield and profitableness are discussed, and the practice of thinnings is known, but only for the purpose of removing and using the dead material.

Forest protection was poorly developed: of insects little, of fungi no knowledge existed. Hand-picking was applied against caterpillars, also ditches into which the beetles were driven and then covered; the use of hogs in fighting insects was also known. That goats were undesirable in the woods had been observed. Some remarkable precocious physiological knowledge or rather philosophy existed: it was recognized that frost produces drought and that a remedy is to loosen the soil, aerating the roots, to drain or water as the case might require, and to prune; but also sap letting was prescribed. Against hail, dead owls were to be hung up; against ants, which were deemed injurious, ashes with vinegar were to be applied, or else an ass’s heart.

Curiosities in wood technology were rife and many contradictions among the wood sharps existed, as in our times. Only four elements, earth, water, fire, air, composed all bodies; the more fire in the composition of a wood, the more readily would it decay. Spruce, being composed of less earth and water but more fire and air, is therefore lighter than oak which, mostly composed of earth, is therefore so durable; but the latter warps and develops season splits because on account of its density it cannot take up readily and resists the penetration of moisture.