THE MANAGEMENT OF EPPING FOREST. 59 



larl)' mention Lord's Bushes, which 3'oii have seen to-day, because this has been 

 tliinned out four times within a period of fourteen years. And I select this also 

 in order to bring out and to emphasize the fact that I am only speaking as an 

 individual member, because one of the correspondents in " The Times," a member of 

 oar Club, appeals to this verj^ district as "a frightful example of injudicious and 

 unnecessary clearing." He bases his criticism on an expression of opinion by the 

 editor of "The Gardener's Magazine" (" City Press,'' Feb. 28th.) I cannot imagir e 

 that the editor of that magazine ever knew Lord's Bushes as I knew it twenty 

 years ago. You have been through it to-day, and there are no doubt man}- 

 residents here who have known it as long as or even longer than L I hope we 

 shall liave the benefit of their candid experience ; in legal phraseology " without 

 prejudice." 



In expressing general concurrence with the doings of the Conservators, I have 

 no intention of leading you to suppose that no mistakes have been made or that 

 1 am prepared to endorse every detail for which they are responsible. But after 

 perusing the correspondence, and after consulting with some of their critics, I am 

 fully persuaded of one thing, and that is that very much has recently been laid 

 on their shoulders for which they are in no way accountable. The paper warfare 

 has been conducted in a manner not altogether fair to that body. I think that 

 some hasty correspondents have attributed to wilful clearing the necessary re- 

 moval of burnt underwood resulting from accidental or malicious firing. I am 

 equally of opinion that the charge of widening straight rides which are already 

 too wide is based on a hasty examination of the cleared bays or recesses which 

 have been made with the very object of breaking up the unsightly regularity of 

 these straight rides, which were in existence before the present management. 

 But in admitting that mistakes may have been matle I contend that they have 

 been, on the whole, unimportant. And after all we have to do with a body of 

 mortals. If they could have managed an area of nearly 6,000 acres (over which 

 cattle are allowed to graze), comprising heaths and bogs, dense groves of stunted 

 pollards which have been hacked about for centuries, gravel expanses which have 

 been scarred by pits, large tracts of cultivated land, which have been rescued for 

 the public, — if they could have dealt with this stretch of country in the course of 

 some fourteen years so as to make it " natural " and give satisfaction to every- 

 body, then indeed would the Conservators have established a claim to be ranked 

 with the Immortals. 



Eleven years ago, when little or nothing had been done but the artificialising 

 of certain parts of the Forest, when little or no attempt had been made at restor- 

 ing natural conditions, and when, to crown all, a railway scheme was projected, 

 we naturally took alarm (Proc. E.F.C., vol. iii., appendix L, p. xxviii.). It was 

 but reasonable to look upon these straws as indicating the direction of the wmd. 

 It was then that I made certain statements, which an anonymous correspondent 

 in " The Times " (April 2nd) has done me the honour of quoting as a horrid 

 example of inconsistency. But this critic has conducted the polemic by political 

 rather than by scientific methods. He adopts the very stale stratagem of selecting 

 one or two passages from the paper read in 1883, and confronting them with 

 opinions expressed in connection with the present agitation. He does not inform 

 the public when the said statements were n-ade, neither does he inform them that 

 they had reference to the destruction consequent upon the introduction of a rail- 

 way with all its concomitants. And he does not do the Conservators the justice 

 of admitting that the "rowdyism" which I then complained of, has been largely 

 suppressed, and in one part of the Forest (opposite the " Rising Sun " Inn) alto- 



