Primitive Society (PDF)

THE term ' forest' has always had for me a strange fascination. Dr. Johnson defines a forest as ' a wild, uncultivated tract of ground interspersed with trees.' Italians still call strangers generally forestieri, conveying the idea that all outside the pale of civilization is forest. The Great Hercynian Forest, covering half of Northern Europe, was to the Romans an unknown region of monstrous import. Travellers in Central Africa have scarcely yet penetrated the great Forest, where strange types of men and apes of terrible proportions have been seen by a few. The human race seems actually to have sprung into existence as a forest animal, and the earliest instincts of mankind are now represented by the almost universal love of the chase. Romantic tales like that of Robin Hood and his Foresters bold are still cherished in most civilized countries. In England men still cling to the traditions of foresters, and in Germany they reverence ' the gray and the green.' In India the term ' jungle ' has a similarly wide and uncertain meaning, not necessarily implying trees any more than the Scotch ' deer forest,' but signifying a region where savage animals dwell, and where wild men exist. I have been asked a hundred times what a Forest Officer in India does when engaged in his forest duties. People generally seem to look on the forests there very much as the Italians must have done-as unknown to civilized mankind.