THK ARKA OF EPPING I'ORKST FOR FAUNISTIC PURPOSES. II 



in parts which have been partially or wholly cleared of trees, or may 

 even re-appear when the tracts are replanted. This may be seen in 

 parts of the cleared tracts of land formerly constituting Hainault 

 Forest. What area, then, should we consider as being Epping Forest 

 for our purposes ? There is no very natural district which can be so 

 defined. A very large portion of Essex was formerly actually covered 

 with trees, and even in historical times the limits of the legal 

 "Forest of the Lord the King" were very wide indeed; in 1292, 

 its metes and bounds in Essex extended " from the bridge at 

 Stratford unto the bridge of Cattywad [over the Stour] in length, 

 and in breadth from the Thames unto the King's highway which is 

 called Stanstrete " [the road from Bishops' Stortford to Colchester]. 

 But such extensive claims represented the views of a race of Norman 

 kings who "loved the deer as though they were brothers," and killed 

 them off almost as jovially. We naturalists must be satisfied 

 with more modest domains. Several successive ordinances have 

 restricted the area of the legal " Forest of Essex," and have brought 

 its bounds more nearly conterminous with the remains of the ancient 

 woodlands which we know as Epping or W^altham Forest. We 

 therefore propose, in the absence of a better basis of delimitation, to 

 define Epping Forest for faunistic purposes as the area embraced in 

 the last perambulation, that of 17th Charles I. (1641). The tract 

 of land so defined is fairly natural, being the district between the Lea 

 and the Stort on the west, and the Roding on the east, and bounded by 

 the road from Stratford to Romford on the south. The northern 

 margin is less easily traced. It should always be remembered 

 that it by no means follows that the included district was all wood- 

 land, only that the district was "forest" in a legal sense, and there- 

 fore subject to forest laws and customs. Within these boundaries 

 were, of course, many villages, farm lands, and private grounds and 

 woods. The lines of the Perambulation of 1641 embraced about 

 60,000 acres, of which about 10,000 acres were open waste, and of 

 this 4,000 acres belonged to Hainault Forest (with which we have 

 nothing to do at present), leaving about 6,000 acres as the waste of 

 Epping Forest. And remembering, as we have before pointed out 

 (see "Journal of Proceedings, Essex Field Club," vol. iv., p. ciii.), 

 that Epping Forest at present consists of about 5,575 acres, its area 

 since Charles the First's time has manifestly not greatly diminished. 

 With these facts in view it is time that the disagreeable word 

 " remnant " should cease to be applied to our forest. 



