The Select Committee on the New Forest. 9 7 



commoners' rights over the forest, and to appoint officers to prevent 

 encroachments upon them. 



That all the rights of the Crown reserved under the Acts of William 

 III. and I80I, except as it is herein suggested that they should be 

 modified, be maintained. 



That provision be made that, in event of any future severance of 

 interests in the forest between the Crown and the Commoners, the 

 limitations now proposed to be placed on the exercise of rights of the 

 Crown should in no way prejudice th-e rights of the Crown. 



The Hon. J. K. Howard, the Commissioner of Woods, having the 

 management of the New Forest, stated that he considers the oak to grow 

 much faster with the Scotch nurses, and with the regular system of 

 planting, than it would if there were seedling trees scattered thinly 

 over it. " There is no desire," he said, " to exclude the public, but 

 we must exclude the commoners' cattle, and therefore we must lock 

 the gates ; if the gates are not locked, they go and turn their cattle 

 in, and I think the best thing, in a national point of view, that the New 

 Forest could be devoted to, would be that which it is devoted to now, 

 the growth of timber. As for cultivating lands which average only 

 10s. an acre, you would not get the interest upon the outlay for 

 drainage and farm buildings, let alone any rent. The proposal to 

 remove the deer originated with the proprietors in the forest, who were put 

 to great expenses by them ; their crops were so badly injured, they were 

 obliged to spend double what they otherwise need have done in fencing, 

 and that led to a great deal of complaint. In the New Forest, the 

 rights of the Crown are paramount over the rights of the commoners, 

 that when the Crown kept deer there, it had the right of keeping un- 

 limited stock, and of depriving the commoners, if it liked, of any 

 pasturage whatever." Another witness spoke of tlie wretched condition 

 of the deer in 1 848, when the warden returned that they were only 

 fit for carrion. It was argued in evidence that the commoners were 

 benefited under the Act of 1851, in that they are relieved from the 

 burden of the deer over their heads, whilst they have the rights of 

 common preserved to them, and that it is unreasonable to claim a 

 right of common for twelve instead of six months, because they are 

 relieved from the burden of the deer, and that the Crown did not 

 obtain a very substantial advantage, without giving up anything in 

 return, by the right of planting on an additional area of 10,000 acres 

 and that the right to keep deer was more valuable to the Crown than 

 the right to enclose 10,000 acres. The value of the right to keep deer 

 was estimated at I5s. per head for 3,000 deer ; that is, at twenty-five 

 years' purchase, upwards of £56,000. 



Mr. John Clayton, timber valuer deposed, in reply to the question, 

 "Do you not think that in old woods where there are intervals in 



