354 THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 



;Mr. Buxton replied, and cx]^iessed the hope that such a meetinj^j of inspection 

 by the Chib would be an annual fixture. He also gave many details of his work, 

 which are mainlv embodied in the preceding paragraphs. Mr. Buxton 

 alluded to the difficulties he had experienced in an endeavour to transplant 

 seedlings from Epping Forest to Hainhault. When the seedlings were taken up 

 free from earth they mostly died, but when a small clod of their native earth was 

 transplanted with the seedlings, they stood the process well. He was also 

 puzzled at the absence of the beech from Hainhault ; much of the higher ground 

 was superticinlly like some parts of Epping Forest where the beech flourished, 

 and yet the tree was not found growing on it. 



Prof Fisher also spoke, and his special remarks on Hainhault are summarised 

 in like manner in this report. He gave some most interesting information on 

 the history and methods of management of Continental Forest. He said that 

 when we considered the magnificent State Forests which were still found in 

 nearlv all European countries except the British Isles, and remembered that 

 there were enormous areas of Crown forests in Britain under the Plantagenet 

 kin<^s, it was sad to feel that most of these woodlands were alienated by our 

 former sovereigns, either by gift, or by sale for inadequate supplies of ready 

 money. The first King of England who showed the slightest wish to maintain 

 our English woods was James I., who ordered that oak trees in the Royal 

 forests should no longer be lopped. It had been the practice to pollard most of 

 tlie trees in order to supply fodder to the deer during winter, as they browsed on 

 the b irk of the lopped branches, and when the latter were stripped of bark the 

 wood was appropriated by the keepers. There were in Windsor Forest 

 scarcely any oak trees more than two hundred years old that had not been 

 ])ol]arded. 



The Forest of Dean appeared always to have been looked upon as a source of 

 supply of oak for our Navy, and in one of the captured ships of the Spanish 

 Armada, an order of Philip, Kmg of Spain, was found, directing an expedition to 

 be sent, after the Spanish Army had landed in England, to devastate that 

 forest in the interests of Spain. By the reign of James I. the original vast 

 supplies of wood from the Weald were becoming exhausted, and companies were 

 started to make glass with coal instead of with wood fuel. There were still, 

 however, plenty of hedgerow and coppice oaks in England, mostly in private 

 hands ; and the first important oak plantations in tlie New Forest were made by 

 William III., who, as a Dutchman, recognised the necessity for a permanent 

 supply of oak for the Navy. The old Duchess of Marlborough, who was Ranger 

 of Windsor Forest for a long period, made some oak plantations, and her trees 

 were properly grown, mixed with beech, and were now nearly two hundred 

 years old, and probably the finest oak trees in Britain. Simihar fine oaks, grown 

 with beech, were formerly plentiful in the Forest of Dean, but for some reason or 

 other the use of beech as a nurse to the oak was discontinued ; and when, after 

 the Napoleonic Wars, about ^300,000 was voted by Parliament for planting oaks 

 in the Crown forests, they were planted without any help from beech, and large 

 areas of these branchy, poor oaks, now about eighty years old, maj^ be seen in all 

 our existing Crown woodlands. 



Continental rulers were much less wasteful with their forests, although they 

 were quite as great hunters of the deer as our own sovereigns. To take France 

 as an example. In 1665 Colbert, the Finance ^Minister of Louis XIV., saw the 

 necessity for maintaining a supply of oakwood for the French Navy. " La 



