1885.] EDITORIAL NOTES. 77 



LoxDON Breathing Spaces. — The Gravelpit Wood, having an 

 area of 69 acres, at Highgate, has been offered Ly the Ecclesiastical 

 Commissioners, through Lord Stanhope, for the perpetual use and 

 enjoyment of the inhabitants of the metropolis, and accepted 

 by the Corporation of London. It has been suggested that the 

 great city companies should together purchase the adjoining 

 churchyard — Bottom Wood, which, united witli the above, would 

 form a much-needed pleasure ground of 120 acres. But, as a 

 correspondent has well observed elsewhere, the education of city 

 children in the use of such privileges is as clamant as their exten- 

 sion. If the Prussian law, which holds parents responsible for the 

 municipal offences of their children, prevailed here, such destruction 

 as was recently effected by juvenile wrong-doers on the newly- 

 planted plane trees along Kennington Eoad, S.E., would be 

 impossible. 



EoMXEY Marsh. — j\Ir. A. J. Burrows traced the past and present 

 history of this celebrated Kentish agricultural district in a paper 

 communicated to the Surveyors' Institution. The numerous churches 

 in the Marsh noted amongst other celebrated topographers by 

 William Cobbett, do not prove the population to have ever been 

 more numerous than at present. They appear to have been pre- 

 sented to the church in the hope of solacing their evil consciences 

 by kings and nobles who were rude and licentious. The local 

 government is of old date ; and is administered by the lords, 

 bailiff, and jurats. So valued is !the position of a lord, that a 

 piece of land whose possession carried with it the lordship of 

 Craythorne recently sold for £153 per acre — ordinary marsh 

 pasture. - A good pasture in the marsh will carry six sheep to the 

 acre from April to October, and three for the remainder of the year, 

 besides a few bullocks. The sheep kept in liomney Marsh only 

 vary from 150,000 to 180,000, according to the season. Mr. 

 Burrows controverted the common opinion that the marsh land once 

 broken up will not lay again in grass. But several of the Fellows 

 disputed this. Mr. Webb had found on enclosing some land near 

 the Swale, which ran into the sea by the mouth of the Medway, 

 that the deposit on the saltings accumulated about 14 inches in 

 depth in 100 years. According to Mr. E. Watermann, rents 

 varied from £2, 10s. to £5 per acre. In most seasons the marsh 

 was nearly clear from rot, while on land nearer the hills, in years 

 like 1860, the sheep were all affected. When the water came 

 from the hills on to the marshes, sheep suffered from rot, whereas 

 nearer the sea they were perfectly healthy. 



