The Story of our Englisk Woodlands. 6i 



had been established in all naval stores by Scandinavian and 

 Russian merchants, and endeavours were made to stimulate a 

 trade with the American colonies and Scotland by a system 

 of bounties.^ 



In 1771 a committee of the House of Commons was directed 

 to inquire into the state of oak timber throughout the king- 

 dom. It was found that wood for naval purposes had dimin- 

 ished to such a degree that, for fear of alarming the public, the 

 information thus obtained was hushed up.^ A restraint was 

 put upon the building of ships for the East India Company, 

 and the matter was allowed to rest for twenty years. The 

 eleventh report of the commissioners in 1792 contained still 

 more alarming statistics, and from every county came the 

 same evidence of an approaching timber famine. In six of the 

 royal forests four-fifths of the trees fit for naval purposes had 

 disappeared between the survey of 1608 and that of 1783. At 

 the accession of George III. in 1760, the tonnage of the Royal 

 Navy had been 321,104 tons ; in 1788 it had risen to 413,667 

 tons, and twenty years later it had nearly doubled itself. It 

 was also recognised that the area of the royal forests, enormous 

 though it was, could not cope with the demands of the national 

 ship-builders. Over 50,000 loads of oak were annually re- 

 quired for the royal dockyards, and four times that amount 

 for all the shipping of the country. The estimated area of the 

 Crown woodlands did not much exceed 100,000 acres, and over 

 400,000 were required. The Government passed one or two 

 measures to promote the enclosure of wastes ^ for purposes of 

 sylviculture, and by the instrumentality of the Board of 

 Agriculture asked information on the subject from the farmers. 

 Some one or other recommended that an area of 70,000 acres 

 in the royal forests should be cleared, encloseiJ, and planted 

 with acorns at a cost of £38,500; and some one else recalled 

 the fact that when in 1700 a similar suggestion had been 

 carried into effect on a smaller scale in the New Forest, the 



» 3 and 4 Anne, c. 10 ; 12 Anne, st. 1, c. 9 ; 8 Geo. I. c. 12. 

 '^ The Gentlemari's Magazine and Annals of Agriculture teem witli 

 articles relating to this crisis. 



» 29 Geo. II. c. 36 ; 10 Geo. III. c. 42. 



