The Story of our English Woodlands. 53 



or waiting to be taken to tlie Medway for consignment to the 

 Chatham yards, or to be carried westward to those at Ports- 

 mouth and Plymouth.^ 



Before we dismiss this important branch of our subject, it is 

 worth noticing that the homely hog played an unintentional 

 but not unimportant part in providing what has been called 

 " England's first line of defence." It was for pig-feed that 

 under the pannage system large areas had, from the earliest 

 times, been devoted to the propagation of the acorn. From 

 this lowly origin many a forest monarch sprang, which came 

 eventually to form a part of those wooden bulwarks to which 

 we have hitherto owed our immunity from foreign foes. 



Evelyn, like most enthusiastic lovers of nature, could not 

 bear to see a tree badly treated. Unlike Weston, he was highly 

 dissatisfied with the laws, and would have expressed no horror 

 had the legislature thought fit to revive the long obsolete 

 statute which rendered any one who beheaded a tree, without 

 its owner's leave, liable to the cruel punishment of maiming.^ 



He was very severe against the apparently harmless amuse- 

 ment of "going a maying," and in order to bring it into dis- 

 repute, dragged into the light the obscene and pagan custom 

 which originated it. He termed the festive scene on the 

 village green " a riotous assembly of idle people," and the dance 

 of lasses and lads in front of the alehouse, a " drunken Bac- 

 chanalia." All this tirade against one of the most pictur- 

 esque and (whatever its origin may have been) innocent of our 

 national holidays, arose in the great arboriculturist's mind, 

 because once a year a few straight trees were sacrificed as 

 maypoles, and some boughs and leaves stripped off for their 

 ornamentation.^ 



Indeed, he regarded a tree in very much the same light as 

 Arthur Young regarded wheat. Both, in the estimation of 

 their respective champions, were absolutely necessary to the 

 national existence, — the one as a means of defence, the other as 



* Defoe, Tour through Britain^ vol. i. p. 204, 7th ed., 17G9. 



* He made some impression on the authorities, as evidenced by 15 Car. 

 II. c. 2, 20 Car. II. c. 3, and 22 and 23 Car. II. c. 7, § 5. 



3 Sylva of Evelyn, p. 287. 



