284 llEMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



must take up liis cow, but where or how can he afford 

 to keep her if the run in the forest is refused ? It may 

 be, and certainly is, a valuable right to the poor, and 

 an expensive one to purchase from those in possession 

 of it ill the event of a general enclosure; and, therefore, 

 if the Crown can prove, as I believe it can, that the 

 poor have not the run of the milch cow vested in them, 

 why, if an enclosure be contemjDlated, it is an economy 

 to stop it ; but I fearlessly say, that it is not an economy 

 graceful to the Crown, or such as a high-minded 

 Minister would have advised. 



Now, by way of experiment, let me suppose another 

 plan had been adopted, and draw a picture of the 

 New Forest in the early part of June, as I could wish 

 it had been kept, and to which, if this Act is not found 

 to work well, it could yet be returned. Look at that 

 cottage ! no doubt it is an encroachment arising from 

 a " rolling fence" and the neglect of the forest officials, 

 but the time has passed for any reclaim on the part of 

 the Crown, and honest, hard-working people, with their 

 family, live in it. Surrounded by heather, look at their 

 row of beehives, and what beautiful honey they make ! 

 The forest greensward runs up to their little garden, 

 and, down in a swamp below, there are a couple of pigs 

 rooting for a living, while, grazing close by, in full 

 use, is a Jersey-bred or an Alderney cow. The head 

 wood-reeve passes, and seeing the good wife at the 

 door addresses her thus : — " Well, mistress, your 

 husband pleases me very well, now, and has entirely 

 left off his idle habits ; the keepers say they can trust 

 him all over their walks, and that he neither steals 

 wood, deer, nor game. He brought me a little leveret 

 this morning that he had found when he was at work, 

 in a place where he thought it was not safe, so there 



