Note 114 — Chapter III

Browsing animals, and most of all the goat, are considered by foresters as more injurious to the growth of young trees, and, therefore, to the reproduction of the forest, than almost any other destructive cause. "According to Beatson's Saint Helena, introductory chapter, and Darwin's Journal of Researches in Geology and Natural History, pp. 582, 583," says Emsmann, in the notes to his translation of Foissac, p. 654, "it was the goats which destroyed the beautiful forests that, three hundred and fifty years ago, covered a continuous surface of not less than two thousand acres in the interior of the island [of St. Helena], not to mention scattered groups of trees. Darwin observes: 'During our stay at Valparaiso, I was most positively assured that sandal wood formerly grew in abundance on the island of Juan Fernandez, but that this tree had now become entirely extinct there, having been extirpated by the goats which early navigators had introduced. The neighboring islands, to which goats have not been carried, still abound in sandal wood.'"

In the winter, the deer tribe, especially the great American moose deer, subsists much on the buds and young sprouts of trees; yet—though from the destruction of the wolves or from some not easily explained cause, these latter animals have recently multiplied so rapidly in some parts of North America, that, not long since, four hundred of them are said to have been killed, in one season, on a territory in Maine not comprising more than one hundred and fifty square miles—the wild browsing quadrupeds are rarely, if ever, numerous enough in regions uninhabited by man to produce any sensible effect on the condition of the forest. A reason why they are less injurious than the goat to young trees may be that they resort to this nutriment only in the winter, when the grasses and shrubs are leafless or covered with snow, whereas the goat feeds upon buds and young shoots principally in the season of growth. However this may be, the natural law of consumption and supply keeps the forest growth, and the wild animals which live on its products, in such a state of equilibrium as to insure the indefinite continuance of both, and the perpetuity of neither is endangered until man, who is above natural law, interferes and destroys the balance.

When, however, deer are bred and protected in parks, they multiply like domestic cattle, and become equally injurious to trees. "A few years ago," says Clavé, "there were not less than two thousand deer of different ages in the forest of Fontainebleau. For want of grass, they are driven to the trees, and they do not spare them. * * It is calculated that the browsing of these animals, and the consequent retardation of the growth of the wood, diminishes the annual product of the forest to the amount of two hundred thousand cubic feet per year, * * and besides this, the trees thus mutilated are soon exhausted and die. The deer attack the pines, too, tearing off the bark in long strips, or rubbing their heads against them when shedding their horns; and sometimes, in groves of more than a hundred hectares, not one pine is found uninjured by them."—Revue des Deux Mondes, Mai, 1863, p. 157. See also Appendix, No. 21.

Beckstein computes that a park of 2,500 acres, containing 250 acres of marsh, 250 of fields and meadows, and the remaining 2,000 of wood, may keep 364 deer of different species, 47 wild boars, 200 hares, 100 rabbits, and an indefinite number of pheasants. These animals would require, in winter, 123,000 pounds of hay, and 22,000 pounds of potatoes, besides what they would pick up themselves. The natural forest most thickly peopled with wild animals would not, in temperate climates, contain, upon the average, one tenth of these numbers to the same extent of surface.