Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1917 — Words Which Have Strayed. [ARTICLE]

Words Which Have Strayed.

Hardly any words in the English language have strayed farther from their original meaning than the terms of forestry. Thus a forest was originally a great tract of country, which might include woods, cultivated lands, pastures, and even towns and villages, all the’ hunting rights over which were reserved to.4he‘"fnonarch. A chase diffeted from a forest mainly in tlie fact that the hunting rights were vested in a subject instead ,of the king. A. park was a fenced preserve either in or out of a forest, whilst a warren was a piece of waste ground over which the right to hunt the hare,-the rabbit, and the fox, the pheasant, the partridge, ami the woodcock, had been granted by the king. In the same way the term afforestation had nothing to do with the planting of trees. It meant the subjection of any tract of country to the forest laws, in other words it was the setting aside of this tract as a forest. A forest might, and commonly did, Include vast estates of -landowners and large towns whose rights remained untouched except as to game.