The MINNESOTA CONSERVATIONIST 
 
FORESTS AND HUMAN 
WELFARE 
(Continued for Page 3) 
America, an adequate supply   of ship 
building timber first stimulated an inter- 
est in forest planting and conservation. 
Historians tell us that boats 'were made 
by riverside and lakeside peoples very 
early in the Neolithic Age of culture. 
These boats, to be sure, may not have 
been much more than the unworked 
trunks of trees. Later on men devised 
ways of hollowing out these logs by 
means of fire and tools and thus the 
canoe was developed. Still later, perhaps 
as early as 7000 B. C., man learned how 
to cut logs into boards, and how to fash- 
ion such boards into ships. By 1000 B. C., 
the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, and the 
Cretans built ships of considerable size, 
and because of these ships and the trade 
they made possible the great commer- 
cial cities Tyre, Sidon, Carthage, Utica, 
Troy, and others grew and flourished, and 
largely because of these ships and the 
warfare they made possible these cities 
were destroyed. 
The Romans seem to have had an ade- 
quate supply of ship timber in the third 
and second centuries B. C., because they 
burned with utter abandon the Carth- 
aginian fleet in 203 B. C. and the Syrian 
fleet in 189 B. C. Nevertheless there are 
some indications that ship building tim- 
ber was becoming somewhat scarcer, be- 
cause when Macedonia became part of 
the Roman Empire in 167 B. C. the Ro- 
mans restricted the cutting of ship tim- 
ber in the then still extensive forests of 
that country. 
Many years later England, too, felt the 
threat to its national security because of 
an inadequate supply of timber for the 
maintenance of its navy. Even at the 
time of the Roman invasion of Britain, 
the British Isles were for the most part 
covered with a great stretch of primeval 
 
forests. Due to uncontrolled cutting and 
fire, the great forests of pine and hard- 
woods were swept away, leaving     the 
mountains bare and denuded much as 
they exist today in Wales and the Scot- 
tish Highlands. 
From early times, after the departure 
of the Romans, the forests of England 
were utilized by the King and his Nobles 
for sport and the chase and by the peas- 
ants for grazing. Large tracts of the 
country were reserved as Royal Hunting 
Grounds. At first there were forests and 
land for all; but after the Norman Con- 
quest the area of land available for agri- 
culture was so limited as to cause real 
hardship on the rural population. Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, and several of his 
descendants, were passionately fond of 
the chase, and they became so alarmed 
at the rate forest lands were being de- 
forested that they extended the hunting 
areas and called them Royal Forests. 
Henry I, Stephen, and Henry II all in- 
creased the size and extent of the Royal 
Forests, until an unbearable situation 
arose for the rural population. It was 
during the Regency, while Henry III was 
a boy that the famous forest charter of 
1217 was obtained by the people. This 
charter was revised and modified in 1225. 
A clause in this, one of the most famous 
charters of these times, ran as follows: 
"No man    from  henceforth  shall lose 
either life nor members for killing  a 
deer." The penalty instead was impris- 
onment for one year and a day, or a fine. 
Edward I liberalized the forest laws still 
further. Large areas of Royal Forests 
were opened up for use by the rural pop- 
ulation. There being a demand for agri- 
cultural land, the forest was greatly re- 
duced. 
Just prior to 1482, the Government be- 
came very uneasy at the rapid rate at 
which the forests of the country were 
disappearing, and consequently in that 
 
year passed an Act known as the Statute 
of Enclosure, designed to perpetuate the 
existing forests. This Statute was con- 
siderably strengthened in  1543. The 
watchful care of the Parliaments of this 
period, and their enactments to insure 
the proper management and protection 
of British woods were due solely to a rec- 
ognition that the upkeep of the country's 
fleet was dependent on the maintenance 
of a sufficient area of British woods man- 
aged on the lines most suitable for the 
production of the National requirements. 
In fact, the Government realized that the 
National safety depended upon this mar- 
gin. A critical period arose during the 
reign of Henry VIII, who seized upon the 
church lands in the year 1535. These 
lands contained fine woods, many of 
which were cut down by the Nobles to 
whom they were granted by the King. 
A far greater devastation of woods 
took place during the Civil War. From 
1642 onward to the Restoration, fellings 
were carried out on an enormous scale, 
whole forests being completely razed to 
to the ground while other large areas 
were laid waste by fire and wanton de- 
struction. So serious was the damage 
and so grave the position with reference 
to timber supplies that within four years 
after the Restoration the matter was 
brought to public notice by the Council 
of the newly founded Royal Society, 
which commissioned one of the charter 
members of the Society to deal with the 
matter in a memorandum. This member 
happened to be John Evelyn, an historian 
of note, a famous diarist, and a forester 
extraordinary.      (To be continued.) 
Commonwealth Electric Co. 
CONTRACTING ENGINEERS 
Minneapolis. Minn.    St. Paul, Minn. 
504 Kasota Bldg.      417 Broadway 
Tel. GE 6531         Tel. GA 1836 
 
I to3 
More Miles 
per 
Gallon