"]^ The yournal of Forestry, 



verderers only. These verderers are to be seven in number, six elected and 

 one officially appointed. An elective verderer must have a property qualifica- 

 tion consisting of not less than a hundred and fifty acres of land 

 to which some right of common over the forest is attached. The 

 franchise for the election of these verderers is pretty widely spread. 

 All the parliamentary voters in any parish or township, any portion 

 of which is situate within the perambulation of the forest, are to 

 have votes for the verderers, and all who are on the register of persons 

 having rights of common over the forest. These rights of common belong to 

 some 65,000 acres of land, about two-thirds of which are outside the forest. 

 There are, besides, rights of turbary, or in other words of cutting turf, heath, 

 and ling for fuel, which attach to about 1,500 cottages. A turbary right ex- 

 tends, we understand, to the cutting of about 4,000 turves annually ; the turf, 

 it is said, renews itself, and is cut only on land which is so poor as to be 

 of little use for any other purpose. The verderers are to have very lai^ge powers 

 under the bill for preventing encroachments and punishing breaches of 

 the law. Each verderer is to be a justice of the peace in and for the 

 forest, and a Court of Swainmote, when transacting judicial business, is 

 to be deemed a court of petty sessions, as if the forest were a petty 

 sessional division. Some other detaUs of the bill are perhaps open 

 to improvement, but its main features seem to us to be all that could 

 be desired. The election, for example, should be by ballot and not by- 

 open voting; and the verderers ought to have the power of oVjjecting to re- 

 enclosures, which the sixth clause specially withholds from them. The orna- 

 mental wo6dsand trees, moreover, should, as the Select Committee advised, 

 be "carefully preserved," and not, as the eighth clause enacts, be preserved 

 "so far as is practicable," since the Commissioners of Woods and Forests 

 have already shown conclusively that their discretion in such matters cannot 

 be too highly relied on. 



On the whole, the bill is a most satisfactory one, and Mr. W. H. 

 Smith deserves the best thanks of all who are interested in the preser- 

 vation of our ancient forests and their grand old trees and picturesque 

 landscapes, with what remains of their pristine grandeur and the 

 unalienable right of the public to the free enjoyment of them, under 

 judicious and beneficial laws and regulations, to prevent wanton 

 mischief, or abuse by the individual of the national rights. 



With such an extent of forest land in the hands of the Government, 

 so much in want of thorough scientific and practical treat- 

 ment, in the proper preservation of its amenities, and the judi- 

 cious improvement and planting of its wastes and moorlands, 

 there need be no difficulty worth naming in the way of Govern- 

 ment establishing a School of Forestry in the South of Eng- 

 land, where scientific and practical forestry could be as well 

 and efficiently taught and practised as in the forest schools of 

 France or Germany. With a properly equipped and well-managed 

 school in the New Forest there would be no necessity to send the candi- 

 dates for appointments in our Indian and colonial forests to the 



