The Forest as it was, and is. 11 



of the fern, parts of the half-mountainous scenery near the 

 Fifeshire Lomonds.* 



On the sea-coast near Milton, rise high gravel-capped cliffs, 

 with a basis of Barton clays, cleft by deep ravines, locally known 

 as " bunnies." Inland, valleys open out, dipping between low 

 hills, whilst masses of beech and oak darken the plains. Here 

 and there, marking the swamps, gleam white patches of 

 cotton-grass, whilst round them, on the uplands, spread long, 

 unbroken stretches of purple heather ; and wide spaces of fern, 

 an English Brabant, studded with hollies and yews, some of 

 them as old as the Conquest. Here and there, too, as at 

 Fritham, small farmsteads show their scanty crops of corn, or, 

 as at Alum Green and Queen's North, green lawns pierce and 

 separate the woods, pastured by herds of cattle, with forest pools 

 white with buckbean, and the little milkwort waving its blue 

 heath on the banks. 



These are the main characteristics of the New Forest, and, 

 in some j)oints at least, were the same in the days of the Red 

 King. Nature, when left to herself, even in the course of 

 centuries, changes little. The wild boars, and the wolves, and 

 the red deer, are gone. But much else is the same. The 

 sites and the names of the Forest manors and villages, with 

 slight alterations, remain unchanged. The same barrows still 

 uplift their rounded forms on the plains ; the same banks, the 

 same entrenchments, near which, in turn, lived Kelt, and 

 Roman and Old-English, still run across the hills and valleys. 



* The reader must bear in mind that the word "forest" is here used, 

 as it is always throughout the district, in its primitive sense of a wild, 

 open space. And the moors and plains are still so called, though there 

 may not be a single tree growing upon them. (See chap, iii., p. 35, foot- 

 note.) 



C 2 H 



