a large extent of ground covered with trees. The word is formed from the base Latin foresta, which first occurs in the capitulars of Charlemagne, and is itself derived from the German forst, signifying the same thing. Vossius and Spelman refer it to the Latin foris, as being extra urbem et agros.

The Caledonian and Hercynian forests are famous in history. The former was a celebrated retreat of the ancient Picts and Scots; and the latter, in Caesar's time, extended from the borders of Alsacia and Switzerland to Transylvania, being computed at sixty days' journey in length and nine in breadth. The ancients had a superstitious veneration for forests, as being the favourite abodes of many of their gods. Temples were frequently built in the thickest forests, the gloom and silence of which were calculated to inspire sentiments of devotion. For a similar reason the Druids dwelt in forests, performing sacrifices, instructing youth, and giving laws in their unbraggous recesses.

Law, is defined by Manwood, "a certain territory or circuit of woody grounds and pastures, known in its bounds as privileged for the peaceable being and abiding of wild beasts and fowls of forest, chase, and warren, to be under the king's protection for his princely delight; bounded with unremovable marks and meres, either known by matter of record or prescription; replenished with beasts..." of venery or chase, and great coverts of vert for succour of the said beasts; for preservation whereof there are particular laws, privileges, and officers belonging thereto." Forests are of such antiquity in England that, excepting the New Forest in Hampshire, erected by William the Conqueror, and Hampton Court, erected by Henry VIII., there is no record which makes any certain mention of their erection, though they are often alluded to by various writers, and in several of our laws and statutes. Ancient historians tell us that New Forest was raised by the destruction of twenty-two parish churches, and many villages, chapels, and manors, for the space of thirty miles together, which was attended with divers judgments on the posterity of William I., who erected it; for William Rufus was there shot with an arrow, and before him Richard, the brother of Henry I.; and Henry, nephew to Robert, the eldest son of the conqueror, was, like Absalom, suspended by the hair of the head in the boughs of the forest. The Conqueror, says the "Saxon Chronicle," "loved the red deer as if he had been their father;" and he is said to have visited the slaughter of one of these animals with greater severity than murder itself. This king is said to have possessed in different parts of England no fewer than sixty-eight forests, besides an immense number of chases and parks.

Legally, a forest can only be in the hands of the sovereign; for the sovereign alone has power to grant a commission to be justice in eyre of the forest. A chase differs from a forest in being capable of being held by a subject, in being of smaller extent, and subject to the common law, and not to the forest laws. A chase also may be comprised within a forest.

Forest-Laws, are peculiar laws, different from the common law of England. Before the making of the Carta de Foresta (granted by Henry III. A.D. 1224, and confirmed by Edward I. in 1299), offences committed in the forest were punished at the pleasure of the king in the severest manner. By this charter many forests were disforested and stripped of their oppressive privileges, and regulations were made for the government of those which remained; in particular, killing the king's deer was declared to be no longer a capital offence, but only punishable by fine, imprisonment, or abjuration of the realm. Still, in this charter there were some grievous articles, which, however, were modified by the clemency of later princes; and indeed the forest laws may now be said to be practically abolished.