106 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



An anonymous writer tells: "Part of the waste is ap- 

 propriated by the surrounding parishes, the freeholders of 

 which possess the right of common, or, as it is termed, of 

 venvtlle, on these appropriated parts. The rest of Dartmoor, 

 to which the name of DARTMOOR FOREST, frequently given 

 to the whole waste, strictly applies, and which belongs to 

 the Duchy of Cornwall, has been found by survey to con- 

 tain upwards of fifty-three thousand acres. 



" The highest part of Dartmoor Forest, in which some 

 of the most important rivers of the county have their rise, 

 consists of a succession of morasses formed by the decay of 

 the successive crops of aquatic plants with which this part 

 teems ; these morasses are in some parts fifty feet deep, in 

 others not more than five. 



" Dartmoor was made into a forest by King John. Ed- 

 ward III. gave it to his son the Black Prince, when he in- 

 vested him with the title of Duke of Cornwall, And 

 though Dartmoor is now desolate, and where the oak once 

 grew, there is seen nought but the lonely thistle and the 

 ' feebly whistling grass/ yet that it was once, in part at 

 least, richly clothed with wood cannot be doubted. The very 

 name, so ancient, which it still bears, speaks its original 

 claim to a sylvan character the forest of Dartmoor; and 

 though of this antique forest nothing now remains save 

 one ' wasting remnant of its days ' to show where the dark 

 old forest-trees once stood, yet evidence is not wanting to 

 prove what it has been, since in its bogs and marshes on the 

 moor, near the banks of rivers and streams, sometimes em- 

 bedded twenty feet below the surface of the earth, are 

 found immense trunks of the oak and other trees.* 



" The ' lonely wood of Wistman ' is all that remains of 

 the original Forest of Dartmoor. It lies on the side of a 

 steep hill : at its base runs the western branch of the river 

 Dart, to the north-east of the river Tor. It consists of 

 scrubbed decrepit trees, chiefly oak, scarcely exceeding 



* Probably many of the trees that formed Dartmoor Forest were destroyed by fire, in 

 order to extirpate the wolves that formerly abounded in it. Those that remained may 

 have been destroyed by cattle afterwards pastured there. 



