54 THE MANAGEMENT OF EPPING FOREST. 



nature is lepairing the injury, and already the spot is beinof covered with fine 

 mosses (in which nestle in due season some lovely Hepaticcr) and vast numbers of 

 seedling birches are springing up to renew the woodland for the delight of the 

 next generation. 



Proceeding along the charming forest road, and at the •' Wake Arms " turning 

 to the left down the old Loughton road to Broad Strood Lodge, the company 

 alighted at the entrance to Great Monk Wood, that exquisitely beautiful " bit " of 

 forest scenery, about the operations in which so much angry outcry has been 

 made. Here were a considerable number of tree-trunks, which had been brought 

 t 1 the spot from various parts of the wood for convenience of removal. 

 Sensational pictures had been published of these " fallen monarchs of the wood," 

 apparently under the idea that they had grown and had been felled where they 

 lay ! Here Mr. Buxton mounted on a trunk as a rostrum, and directed the 

 special attention of the meeting to the nature of Monk Wood. He said that it was 

 a mistake to suppose that it was a piece of virgin forest. It did not differ in 

 essentials from any other part of the woodlands which had been pollarded. The 

 bulk of the trees had in effect been pollarded up to fifty years ago, and he was 

 told by Mr. Maitland that the wood was formerly divided into ten sections, each 

 of which was pollarded in succession, one leading branch being left on each tree, 

 a necessary practice in dealing thus with beeches. This process was an ex- 

 tremely unlikely one to produce picturesque trees, and in effect it was only those 

 trees which had been distinctly left untouched which could be so described. In 

 addition to these there were many fine unpollarded trees, and others which were 

 extremely tall and drawn up from overcrowding — thin, almost branchless, in- 

 fested with a blight (allied apparently to the American blight), diseased, and a 

 source of disease. It was these last and a portion of the ugliest of the pollards 

 which had been removed, but only when they were actually doing damage to 

 superior trees. He asked them to remember that it was extremely difficult for 

 any two experts to agree as to the particular trees which should be removed, and 

 he begged them not therefore to criticise individual cases but to consider (ist) 

 whether any should have been removed at all, and (2ndly) whether on the whole 

 the selection had been judiciously made. He called attention to the extreme 

 importance of the question, Flow will the Forest renew itself? Of this there were 

 good illustrations in Monk Wood. Where old openings existed they w'ouid see 

 young groves, here of beeches, there of thorns, and outside the wood of birches. 

 These young growths were of extreme charm in themselves and of immense 

 importance in the economy of the Forest. Mr. Buxton then called attention to 

 that section of the Forest (an example of which they would soon visit) which 

 consisted only of small pollard trees, very thickly grown together, and contended 

 that, in his opinion, the only way to deal with such a tract was to open irregular 

 p.itches, removing several stems together. It would be found that in such patches 

 after a time, the heather appears, and this or thorn bushes act as nurses and pro- 

 tectors for young forest tree;. Finally he asked them not only to use their eye? 

 but their imaginations. There had been too much imagination imported into 

 this controversv, but that was not what he meant. He meant that they should 

 not only see the picture before them but imagine what it would be fifty years 

 hence. To view a wood immediately after it has b$<en thinned was to do some- 

 thing less than justice to the Forest. 



In Monk Wood, a ver}- careful examination was made of the parts of the 

 Forest wl ere thinning had been practised, and contrasting them with a few tracts 

 where little or nothing had been dore since the place came under the care of 



