BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARBORICULTURE OF THE NEW FOREST. 17 
sixty years’ growth. The remainder, of say 63,000 acres, may be 
termed the forest proper—the property of the nation in right of 
the Crown, subject, as to certain parts, to the rights of private 
individuals, termed ‘‘ rights of common.” 
Of this 63,000 acres, about 30,000 acres was described in 1849, 
by one of the most eminent firms of land agents in this country, 
as being “unfit for either agriculture, growth of timber, or pas- 
turage.” If this description was applicable at that date, it is 
infinitely more so now, when prices for all kinds of farm and 
forest produce are at their lowest ebb. 
Of the remainder, 4500 acres is occupied by old woods planted 
prior to the year 1700, 17,670 acres are under plantations of 
dates varying from 190 to 25 years of age, and the balance of 
11,000 acres or so is devoted to rough pasture. 
With this brief description of the condition of the New Forest 
as it was, and as it is, we may proceed to examine what has 
been done, and is being done, in the way of arboriculture past 
and present. 
As has been stated before, the forest laws did something for 
the preservation of the crop of timber actually on the ground, 
but did nothing towards reproducing it, when by natural decay 
it perished. That encoppicements,* and even plantations, were 
made seems probable, because the preamble to the first statute 
passed upon the subject—that of the 22 Edward IV., in a.p. 
1483—refers to the restrictions placed upon planting by the 
forest laws, which regarded the preservation of game as the fore- 
most consideration. But by subsequent statutes—those of the 
35 Henry VIII., and 13 Elizabeth, the practices of encoppic- 
ing were made imperative in the royal forests, and many orders 
and proclamations were made in accordance with them, 
The records of the Court of Exchequer abound with memoranda 
of the cost of erecting fences for the exclusion of the cattle and 
deer from the various copses or woods in different parts of the 
forest, commencing with the reign of Henry VIII. In the 
seventh year of Elizabeth we have a return of ‘‘all Her Majesty’s 
woods in parks, forests, and chases,” in which is given a most 
complete list of the ancient woods of the New Forest, some of 
which can be traced at the present day, though in most cases the 
sites, being land well suited to the growth of timber, have been 
replanted with younger wood at some intermediate period. But 
VOL, XIV. PART I. B 
