74 The Journal of Forestry, 



teristic features and wildness of primitive nature. The whole of 

 this large district lay open and unenclosed until less than two 

 hundred years ago, but an Act was passed in 1698 empowering 

 the Crown to take and enclose 6,000 acres expressly for the- 

 growth of oak timber for naval and other purposes. The 6,000 

 acres were not all enclosed in one place, but scattered in portions all 

 over the forest, no enclosure exceeding 500 acres in extent, and their 

 number being between forty -five and fifty. After being enclosed and 

 planted, each was to remain enclosed only twenty-two years, by which 

 time the young trees were supposed to be out of danger from the 

 browsing of cattle and deer. This limitation of time was taken off 

 in 1808, but tlie obligation to ultimately throw open the enclosed 

 land was still enforced. By an Act passed in August, 1851, the Com- 

 missioners were empowered to remove the deer, and to plant trees other 

 than oaks, and to extend the area enclosed by 10,000 acres, making 

 in all 16,000 acres ; taking in land and throwing it open again as of 

 yore. This power has been exercised in the most barbarous and 

 destructive manner imaginable. Instead of enclosing and planting 

 with suitable trees the bare and desolate wastes and heaths, the Com- 

 missioners pounced npon the richest and most picturesque parts of 

 the forest, cut down the ancient trees — the living mementoes of 

 bygone centuries — tore up with the plough the rich greensward that 

 had existed for ages, and reduced some of the loveliest bits of land- 

 scape scenery in the country to gloomy and monotonous plantations of 

 black fir. 



A writer, who knew the district of Old Sloden before 1851, describes 

 it as one of the grandest examples of forest scenery in England : — 

 " Hollies, yews, and whitebeam of the largest growth stood singly or 

 in small groups at intervals, for the full appreciation of their form and 

 colour, and for glimpses of distant landscape. Here and there a 

 shapely oak or beech overhung the evergreen clumps, and aged birches 

 or hawthorns studded the open spaces." This lovely, picturesque spot 

 was one of the first places selected for the operations of official van- 

 dalism, displaying'an amount of bad taste, and an ignorance of scientific 

 and practical forestry, that will scarcely be credited at the present 

 day. AU the fine old trees were swept away; and it is said there were 

 amongst them 300 ancient yews, many of which were probably in 

 existence in Saxon times, and some of them may have been old trees 

 when the Norman Conqueror erected the New Forest. All have been 

 ruthlessly cut down and destroyed, and even the wavy undulations of 

 the land have been submerged iu an interminable sea of Scots fir, 

 which would have been in its proper place had it been judiciously 

 planted on the high and bare wastes and moorlands, where it would 

 have produced a profitable crop of timber npon land which is other- 

 wise worthless. 



