Note 18 — ANTS

Woodlands have always been cherished here. Wood inspectors were appointed as early as 1626, possibly earlier; they had to traverse the forests every spring, summer and autumn, and to report the slightest damage to the trees. Four years later, an excellent rule was framed to prevent the ever-increasing damage to forest-growth by herds of goats: whoso has three cows, may keep no goat whatever; the owner of two cows may keep one goat; the possession of a single cow entitled you to three goats and no more. This stamped out the goat mischief. Such were the Lords of Blumenegg, from whom certain modern governments might well take a lesson; like sensible tyrants, they not only laid down wise regulations on this and other matters, but saw to it that they were carried out (those gallows!). In the inhospitable recesses of the Walserthal, at five hours’ march from their castle, lying in a caldron of bleak gray crags—an excellent chamois-ground—is the iron-spring and bathing establishment of Rothenbrunnen, where the Alpine rhododendrons droop over your bedroom window; it was the Blumenegg people who erected the first building here in 1650, with accommodation for forty patients. Twenty-six years later they founded a school in the remote hamlet of Sonntag. Their fishery regulations were on the same enlightened scale. As early as 1690 no fishing of any kind was permitted during the spawning season (21 September to 30 November); nets, moreover, were to have meshes wide enough to allow the escape of every fish less than seven inches in length, which happens to be the precise limit fixed, at this present moment, by the conservators of the Exe and other English rivers. For these and other details of the Blumenegg rule see the exhaustive monograph on this subject by one of our best local antiquarians, the late Joseph Grabherr, priest of Satteins (Bregenz, 1907).