BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARBORICULTURE OF THE NEW FOREST, 25 
deserved. About 1022 acres were enclosed and planted and well 
cared for up to the age of some fifteen years; but for fifty years 
after that time nothing more was done. The interest of the 
keepers to whom the Forest was entrusted was, owing to the 
defective system employed, all against the growth of timber. A 
divisum imperium existed by which the keepers were under the 
authority of the Lord Warden, who had control of all things con- 
nected with the deer, etc., while the actual management of the 
timber was in the hands of another department altogether ; 
naturally the two authorities were always at loggerheads. More- 
over, the keepers and other officers were still paid by the bad old 
system of perquisites (of which the rabbits formed one)!. Thus 
they obtained a vested interest in the Forest property, instead of 
being as now the paid servants of the public, and did not hesitate 
to petition against, when they did not openly resist, measures 
that they conceived to be injurious to their own interests. 
All this was against tree planting ; furthermore, to quote again 
the report of the commissioners of 1789: “the neighbouring 
inhabitants have been naturally led to partake in the spoil, and 
hardly to think it a crime to take what no one seemed anxious to 
protect.” That this is no idle word is shown by an item in 
a return of certain receipts from the Forest, which appears in the 
most matter-of-course way, viz., ‘“‘the like of casual oak trees 
found by the surveyor cut down, and by him seized and saved 
from being stolen. . . . Loads, 869. Value, £1526.” 
However, we find that after all, between the years 1761 and 
1787, the Forest was capable of yielding timber valued at no less 
a sum than £87,952, of which £54,449 worth went for the use of 
the navy ; and these figures illustrate the value in all respects to 
the nation of this magnificent property. 
In 1750 a further enclosure of some 230 acres was made, and 
in 1776, 2044 acres more were enclosed, and this is, strictly 
speaking, all that was done under the Act of William III., which 
had for its aim the covering by degrees of the whole of the Forest 
with wood. 
The plantations of 1776 are remarkable in one respect, as com- 
mencing an era which has gone far to alter the whole aspect of 
the New Forest, and even of the whole of the county of Hants 
adjoining. I allude to the introduction of the Scots fir, previously 
to that time unknown in the New Forest as a timber tree, but 
which has now fully established itself as. the natural tree of this 
