THE NEW FOREST. 69 



" We shall probably be right, then, if we are guided by 

 the traditional veneration for the oak which still pervades 

 our land, and consider that the primaeval forests of Britain 

 were for the most part composed of this tree. If so, we 

 must not imagine these great woods to have been an 

 impenetrable jungle. What has taken place observably in 

 the highland forests of native fir, took place, no doubt, in 

 the oak forests of the south. Nature pruned and thinned 

 as well as planted. The strongest plants among the self- 

 sown oaks would domineer over the rest; the natural 

 process of selection would go on, till all but one were 

 stunted and destroyed within the circle of the champion's 

 branches. What would eventually ensue would be rather 

 a natural park than a tangled forest, with glades of light 

 and verdure such as form the character of many parts of 

 the New Forest now, the kings of the wood sweeping for 

 themselves a privileged space around them, suited to their 

 remote antiquity and regal nature. In these deep glades 

 the wild deer could roam and pasture, the native Britons 

 and their shaggy horses find a home ; and in later times 

 the outlaws of society live upon the spoils of the chase and 

 the plunder of the infrequent traveller. Where Robin 

 Hood and Little John could spend the less inclement 

 months of the year, the rude native of earlier centuries 

 might make his constant home and yet live out all his 

 days ; neither of them could have survived a single summer 

 in a forest which admitted neither air nor light. 



What game inhabited these wide-spread forests must be 

 in some degree a matter of conjecture. Not to speak of 

 the earliest times, when those creatures roamed the woods 

 whose colossal bones are stored in many caves, now ran- 



the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the Liber Albus mention is made of ' squared 

 oak timber,' brought in from the country by carts, and of course of domestic growth, as 

 free of city duty or octroi, and of ' planka of oak ' coming in in the same way as paying 

 one plank a cart-load. But in the chapter on the ' Customs of Billyngesgate,' pp. 208, 

 209, relating to goods imported from foreign countries, an import duty of one halfpenny 

 is imposed on every hundred of boards called ' weynscotte 'a term formerly applied 

 only to oak and of one penny on every hundred of boards called ' Rygholt.' The 

 editor explains 'Rygholt 'as ' wood of Riga.' This was doubtless pine or fir. The 

 year in which these provisions were made does not appear, but they belong to the reign 

 of Henry III." J. C. B. 



