240 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



' e Far as the eye could reach no tree was seen ; 

 Earth, clad in russet, scorn'd the lively green : 

 No bird, except as bird of passage, flew ; 

 No bee was heard to hum, no dove to coo ; 

 No stream, as amber smooth, as amber clear, 

 Was seen to glide, or heard to murmur here. " 



And now, reader, let us ask to what good end all this 

 devastation and destruction of animal life leads, and what 

 advantages are likely to be attained; certainly no advantages 

 for the poor, that we may be quite sure of. I never knew an 

 extensive measure of landed improvement, as the saying goes, 

 but the poor always went to the wall. In the first place, with 

 the value of common-rights owned by the local public, the forest 

 never could remunerate the Crown for the trouble and cost of 

 an enclosure. 



The oak that grows on much of the New Forest now is not 

 fit for shipbuilding, and the stag-headed nature of the dwarf 

 trees that ornament the low-lands proves that there is not a 

 depth of clay sufficient to nourish such a tap root as would bring 

 an oak to perfection. Draining will do much for copsewood, 

 but all the draining in the world will not remove a subsoil of 

 shingle or sand, or change a rock to clay. In the new plantation 

 lately made near Brockenhurst, stand, or stood, several dwarf 

 and stag-headed oak trees, as warnings to the planter ; and, at 

 the same time, frowning over his attempt to wood the lawns, are 

 the high trees on the hills, planted there by our forefathers ; and 

 throughout the forest it will be seen that on the hills the best 

 timber flourishes. I do not mean to say that there are not some 

 flats the nature of the soil in which will produce a good oak-tree ; 

 but I speak generally, and am fully convinced that the hills are 

 the places for enclosures. Well, then, on such a soil as the New 

 Forest is chiefly made of, can it pay the Crown, in the face of 

 the present importation of foreign timber, to enclose and plant, 

 bearing in mind that, to keep forest-cattle and ponies out of 

 the enclosure, a fence must be maintained nearly as expensive as 

 that which used to keep out the deer? I am sure that the 



