FOREST STATISTICS 19 



IV. AREAS UNDER WOOD IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 

 BELONGING TO THE CROWN 1 



Name of Wood or Forest. County. Area in Acres. 



Dean Forest .... Gloucester ... 15,664 



Highmeadow Woods . . . Gloucester ... 3,404 



Abbotswood Estate . . . Gloucester ... 524 



Tintern Estate .... Monmouth ... 3,000 



New Forest .... Hants ... 23,088 



Alice Holt Woods . . . Hants ... 1,892 



Woolmer Estate . . . Hants ... 856 



Bere Woods .... Hants ... 1,420 



Parkhurst Woods . . . Hants ... 1,160 



Windsor, exclusive of Great Park Berks ... 10,000 



Delamere Woods . . . Cheshire ... 2,100 



Chopwell Woods . . . Durham ... 870 



Elthajn Woods . . . . Kent ... 240 



Hazelborough and Salcey Woods Northampton ... 1,700 



Esher Woods .... Surrey ... 840 



Total . . 66,758 



The forest areas owned by the State form only 2-2 per 

 cent, of Britain's woodlands ; they are wholly situated in 

 England Scotland, Ireland, and Wales being practically 

 without Crown woods. Much subdivided and subject to 

 the rights and claims of commoners, they cannot easily be 

 treated in a manner suitable for making them models or 

 typical examples of forest management so important a 

 function of government forests abroad. 



Barely 4 per cent, of the total area of the United King- 

 dom has a covering of trees, and for the most part the 

 existing woods have been created for no economic purpose. 

 It is a curious condition for a country where the climate and 

 soil are admirably adapted for the growth of trees, where 

 millions of acres of waste land and moorland invite afforesta- 

 tion, where the consumption of timber 2 is very great and 

 rapidly increasing, and where the foreign timber supply is 

 slowly but assuredly failing. 



1 From figures supplied through the Government Office of Woods and 

 Forests, by E. Stafford Howard, C.B., Commissioner. 



2 The average sum spent upon imported timber for the five years 

 preceding 1899 amounted to over 22,000,000 per annum. Tr. 



