! 
? 
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARBORICULTURE OF THE NEW FOREST. 15 
II. A Brief History of the Arboriculture of the New Forest, 
Hampshire. By the Hon. Gerratp LascreLugs, Deputy 
Surveyor, New Forest. 
I do not propose in this paper to enter at length into the origin 
and formation of the New Forest. We have all learnt at school 
the legend of the devastation of a vast tract of fertile land—the 
destruction of many churches and villages—by the ruthless 
Conqueror, in order to form a Chase where he might enforce the 
savage forest law for the preservation of “the tall deer which he 
loved as if he had been their father,” to quote the ancient 
chronicles. I say ‘‘legend” advisedly, for it is perfectly clear 
to all who have seen the district in question, and to the most 
elementary student of geology, that at no period could the New 
Forest have been a fertile plain, or have nourished the population 
which the Conqueror obtained the credit of evicting. 
The ancient name of the Forest was ‘ Ytene,” a Saxon word 
signifying the ‘‘furzy waste,” and this was probably a good de- 
scription then, as now, of the Forest. There is some evidence of its 
having been used as a Royal Forest in the days of Canute, a.p. 1017; 
and what really happened after the Conquest in 1066 was, that 
William selected this wild tract as a suitable hunting ground for 
himself, within easy reach of his capital city of Winchester, and 
enforced the forest law within its boundaries, thereby reserving the 
exclusive right of sporting for himself. Further than this it is not 
probable that he went, and men retained possession of their landg, 
their woods, mills, or other property, just as before, save only for 
the stringent regulations of the forest law. Of actual arboricul- 
ture there is not much trace at this remote date, except in so far 
as the rigid laws of the forest with regard to ‘‘ vert and venison ” 
served to protect all manner of trees or shrubs under the head 
of ‘‘ vert,” since, ‘‘to preserve well the venison of the forest, it 
is first to begin with the vert.”! Vert was of two kinds: ‘Over 
vert,” or Haut Bois, and ‘‘ Neather vert,” or Sous Bois; the 
first comprised every description of timber tree, or “ great wood” 
as it was termed; the latter, every kind of shrub or bush, such 
as underwood, gorse, thorns, or anything that afforded covert 
for the beasts of the forest—even fern and heath were by some 
1 See Manwood’s ‘‘ Treatise of the Lawes of the Forrest,” 
