BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ARBORICULTURE OF THE NEW FOREST, 29 
gained for him, though quite content, if he be let alone, not to 
raise abstruse points of law or to grudge to others the full benefit 
and enjoyment that can be got out of the Forest. 
From evidence given on behalf of the commoners before the 
Committee of the House of Commons in 1875, we find that the 
owners of holdings from 1 to 20 acres are about 580 in number, 
and own between them 4, part only of the whole of the land 
entitled to rights of common. Of the remaining $3ths, }4ths, or 
rather more than one-half, is owned by ten large proprietors who 
possess not less than 2000 acres of land to which common rights 
attach, besides other property. Of the remainder, considerably 
over two-thirds is owned by about twenty-one possessors of over 
500 acres of the land with rights, and the balance of about 
7000 acres is owned by those who possess less than 500 acres 
of such land. The value of the common right has been recently 
stated to add one-balf to the letting value of the land; a 
cottage with a turbary right fetches £1 a year more than one 
_ without it. These figures will show how large is the question 
of rent, as compared with any other which can be raised locally. 
There need be no difficulty in understanding why it is that the 
landowners of the New Forest! are so exceedingly alert to resist 
anything, whether for national or other purposes, that appears to 
touch, however remotely, the fringe of their rights over the 
Forest, and to invoke the aid of the public by the cry that the 
whole Forest is in danger, when some comparatively unimportant 
local question is under discussion. 
The rights of common are of three kinds: common of pasture, 
of turbary, and of estovers, or fuel wood. The first of these 
rights is in itself perfectly harmless; there is ample room for all 
those who desire to exercise it, to turn out their cattle to make 
the best of what can be got out of the Forest, where the feed is at 
best of the most inferior kind, only fit to nourish inferior stock, 
It is the abuse of the right that makes it hurtful from the national 
point of view, such as when the planting of a few trees in the 
open spaces of decaying woods is resisted, on the plea that they 
occupy space where enough grass might grow to increase the feed 
by a few mouthfuls. Indeed, of late years we have had such 
absurdities as proceedings taken against a golf club “for injury 
to the commoners’ pasture,” by the cutting of 9 holes 41 inches 
1 The total number of Commoners who claim ‘‘common right” in the 
New Forest has been recently stated in evidence to be under 900. 
