But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and otherwise finishing rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced at least three centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the Liber Albus mention is made of "squared oak timber," brought in from the country by carts, and of course of domestic growth, as free of city duty or octroi, and of "planks of oak" coming in in the same way as paying one plank a cart-load. But in the chapter on the "Customs of Billyngesgate," pp. 208, 209, relating to goods imported from foreign countries, an import duty of one halfpenny is imposed on every hundred of boards called "weynscotte"—a term formerly applied only to oak—and of one penny on every hundred of boards called "Rygholt." The editor explains "Rygholt" as "wood of Riga." This was doubtless pine or fir. The year in which these provisions were made does not appear, but they belong to the reign of Henry III.]
Evelyn's "Silva," the first edition of which appeared in 1664, rendered an extremely important service to the cause of the woods, and there is no doubt that the ornamental plantations in which England far surpasses all other countries, are, in some measure, the fruit of Evelyn's enthusiasm. In England, however, arboriculture, the planting and nursing of single trees, has, until comparatively recent times, been better understood than sylviculture, the sowing and training of the forest. But this latter branch of rural improvement now receives great attention from private individuals, though, so far as I know, not from the National Government, except in the East Indian provinces, where the forestal department has assumed great importance. [Footnote: The improvidence of the population under the native and early foreign governments has produced great devastations in the forests of the British East Indian provinces, and the demands of the railways for fuel and timber have greatly augmented the consumption of lumber, and of course contributed to the destruction of the woods. The forests of British India are now, and for several years have been, under the control of an efficient governmental organization, with great advantage both to the government and to the general private interests of the people.
The official Reports on Forest Conservancy from May, 1862, to August, 1871, in 4 vols. folio, contain much statistical and practical information on all subjects connected with the administration of the forest.]
In fact, England is, I believe, the only European country where private enterprise has pursued sylviculture on a really great scale, though admirable examples have been set in many others. In England the law of primogeniture, and other institutions and national customs which tend to keep large estates long undivided and in the same line of inheritance, the wealth of the landholders, the special adaptation of the climate to the growth of forest-trees, and the difficulty of finding safe and profitable investments of capital, combine to afford encouragements for the plantation of forests, which scarcely exist elsewhere in the same degree.
In Scotland, where the country is for the most part broken and mountainous, the general destruction of the forests has been attended with very serious evils, and it is in Scotland that many of the most extensive British forest plantations have now been formed. But although the inclination of surface in Scotland is rapid, the geological constitution of the soil is not of a character to promote such destructive degradation by running water as in Southern France, and it has not to contend with the parching droughts by which the devastations of the torrents are rendered more injurious in those provinces.
It is difficult to understand how either law or public opinion, in a country occupied by a dense and intelligent population, and, comparatively speaking, with an infertile soil, can tolerate the continued withdrawal of a great portion of the territory from the cultivation of trees and from other kinds of rural economy, merely to allow wealthy individuals to amuse themselves with field-sports. In Scotland, 2,000,000 acres, as well suited to the growth of forests and for pasture as is the soil generally, are withheld from agriculture, that they may be given up to herds of deer protected by the game laws. A single nobleman, for example, thus appropriates for his own pleasures not less than 100,000 acres. [Footnote: Robertson, Our Deer Forests. London, 1867.] In this way one-tenth of all the land of Scotland is rendered valueless in an economical point of view—for the returns from the sale of the venison and other game scarcely suffice to pay the game-keepers and other incidental expenses—and in these so-called FORESTS there grows neither building timber nor fire-wood worth the cutting, as the animals destroy the young shoots.
Forests of France.
The preservation of the woods was one of the wise measures recommended to France by Sully, in the time of Henry IV., but the advice was little heeded, and the destruction of the forests went on with such alarming rapidity, that, two generations later, Colbert uttered the prediction: "France will perish for want of wood." Still, the extent of wooded soil was very great, and the evils attending its diminution were not so sensibly felt, that either the government or public opinion saw the necessity of authoritative interference, and in 1750 Mirabeau estimated the remaining forests of the kingdom at seventeen millions of hectares [42,000,000 acres]. In 1860 they were reduced to eight millions [19,769,000 acres], or at the rate of 82,000 hectares [202,600 acres] per year. Troy, from whose valuable pamphlet, Etude sur le Reboisement des Montagnes, I take these statistical details, supposes that Mirabeau's statement may have been an extravagant one, but it still remains certain that the waste has been enormous; for it is known that, in some departments, that of Ariege, for instance, clearing has gone on during the last half-century at the rate of three thousand acres a year, and in all parts of the empire trees have been felled faster than they have grown. [Footnote: Among the indirect proofs of the comparatively recent existence of extensive forests in France, may be mentioned the fact that wolves were abundant, not very long since, in parts of the empire where there are now neither wolves nor woods to shelter them. Arthur Young more than once speaks of the "innumerable multitudes" of these animals which infested France in 1789, and George Sand states, in the Histoire de ma Vie, that some years after the restoration of the Bourbons, they chased travellers on horseback in the southern provinces, and literally knocked at the doors of her father-in-law's country seat. Eugenie de Guerin, writing from Rayssac in Languedoc in 1831 speaks of hearing the wolves fighting with dogs in the night under her very windows. Lettres, 2d ed., p. 6.
There seems to have been a tendency to excessive clearing in Central and Western, earlier than in South-eastern, France. Bernard Palissy, in the Recepte Veritable, first printed in 1563, thus complains: "When I consider the value of the least clump of trees, or even of thorns, I much marvel at the great ignorance of men, who, as it seemeth, do nowadays study only to break down, fell, and waste the fair forests which their forefathers did guard so choicely. I would think no evil of them for cutting down the woods, did they but replant again some part of them; but they care nought for the time to come, neither reck they of the great damage they do to their children which shall come after them."—Oeuvres Completes de Bernard Pallisy, 1844, p. 88.] The total area of France in Mirabeau's time, excluding Savoy, but including Alsace and Lorraine, was about one hundred and thirty-one millions of acres. The extent of forest supposed by Mirabeau would be about thirty-two per cent. of the whole territory. In a country and a climate where the conservative influences of the forest are so necessary as in France, trees must cover a large surface and be grouped in large masses, in order to discharge to the best advantage the various functions assigned to them by nature. The consumption of wood is rapidly increasing in that empire, and a large part of its territory is mountainous, sterile, and otherwise such in character or situation that it can be more profitably devoted to the growth of wood than to any agricultural use. Hence it is evident that the proportion of forest in 1750, taking even Mirabeau's large estimate, was not very much too great for permanent maintenance, though doubtless the distribution was so unequal that it would have been sound policy to fell the woods and clear land in some provinces, while large forests should have been planted in others. [Footnote: The view I have taken of this point is confirmed by the careful investigation of Rentzsch, who estimates the proper proportion of woodland to entire surface at twenty-three per cent. for the interior of Germany, and supposes that near the coast, where the air is supplied with humidity by evaporation from the sea, it might safely be reduced to twenty per cent. See Rentzsch's very valuable prize essay, Der Wald im Haushalt der Natur und der Volkswirthschaft. cap. viii.
The due proportion in France would considerably exceed that for the German States, because France has relatively more surface unfit for any growth but that of wood, because the form and geological character of her mountains expose her territory to much greater injury from torrents, and beause at least her southern provinces are more frequently visited both by extreme droughts and by deluging rains.] During the period in question France neither exported manufactured wood or rough timber, nor derived important collateral advantages of any sort from the destruction of her forests. She is consequently impoverished and crippled to the extent of the difference between what she actually possesses of wooded surface and what she ought to have retained. [Footnote: In 1863, France imported lumber to the value of twenty-five and a half millions of dollars, and exported to the amount of six and a half millions of dollars. The annual consumption of France was estimated in 1866 at 212,000,000 cubic feet for building and manufacturing, and 1,588,300,000 for firewood and charcoal. The annual product of the forest-soil of France does not exceed 70,000,000 cubic feet of wood fit for industrial use, and 1,300,000,000 cubic feet consumed as fuel. This estimate does not include the product of scattered trees on private grounds, but the consumption is estimated to exceed the production of the forests by the amount of about twenty millions of dollars. It is worth noticing that the timber for building and manufacturing produced in France comes almost wholly from the forests of the state or of the communes.—Jules Clave, in Revue des Deux Mondes for March 1, 1866, p. 207.]