232 THE NEW FOREST. 



was about twenty miles from north to south, and fifteen 

 from east to west, and embraced an area of 92,000 acres. 

 Of this, however, nearly one-third, or 27,000 acres, was 

 land in possession of private owners. Since the deer have 

 been killed down, the Crown no longer attempts to en- 

 force rights on enclosed lands. The Forest now prac- 

 tically consists of 65,000 acres, of which a little over 

 2,000 are the demesne lands of the Crown, inclosed and 

 cultivated, and the residue belongs to the Crown, but 

 is, except so much of it as has been temporarily 

 inclosed for the plantation of trees, open and unin- 

 closed, and subject to the rights of common of a very 

 large body of owners and occupiers of cultivated lands 

 in the neighbourhood of the Forest rights of turn- 

 ing out cattle and horses, of turning out pigs to 

 feed on the acorns and mast in the Forest, and rights 

 of turbary and of digging loam, etc. A great part 

 of this wide range is open heath and moor. Other 

 portions of it are covered with groves or plantations 

 of oak and fir. The trees belong to the Crown, and 

 from an early time supplied oak timber to the dock- 

 yards for the construction of vessels of war, so long as 

 the days of wooden vessels existed. Large numbers 

 of deer (for the most part fallow deer, but including 

 some red deer) were formerly maintained in the Forest, 

 and when they found food scarce in the uninclosed 

 land, they ranged over the land of private owners, 

 in such numbers as to make cultivation very un- 

 profitable. My father, in the early part of this century, 

 inherited a property in the Forest, known as Burley, 



