THE NEW FOREST. 239 



tenant of a larger holding ; and many are the men who 

 have risen in this way from the position of labourer to 

 that of farmer. Thus it is that there has grown up 

 round the Forest a class of small occupiers, thrifty 

 and fairly prosperous even in these days of agricultural 

 depression, independent and with the sense of property, 

 and to the last degree tenacious of their rights. 



As time went by, after the Act of 1851 it became 

 more and more clear to the Commoners, and to those 

 interested in the Forest from a public point of view, that 

 the scheme of that Act, if carried out in the manner in 

 which it was being put in force, would result in the 

 destruction both of the beauties of the Forest, and of 

 the value of the Commoners' rights over it. When an 

 inclosure for planting was determined on, the whole of 

 the ancient timber within the area was cleared away ; 

 the land was then drained by wide open drains, and was 

 closely planted with Scotch firs and young oaks. These 

 new plantations, owing to the preponderance of firs, 

 were formal and gloomy in the extreme. All the former 

 pasturage in the area was destroyed, and the growth of 

 new feed in these closely -planted inclosures was impos- 

 sible. It became apparent, from the disinclosed speci- 

 mens of the much less mathematical and scientific method 

 of planting under the Act of 1698 in the time of the early 

 Georges, that the "nurseries" authorised by the Act of 

 1851 would replace the wild and picturesque woodlands 

 with plantations of a most monotonous and artificial 

 appearance, fatal to the natural beauty of the scenery, 

 which they would destroy past all chance of restoration, 



