FORESTRY AND THE NEW FOREST 



New Forest and many others formed Saxon strongholds when the lower 

 courses of the rivers fell into the hands of the Teutonic invaders, while 

 the hill-forts, the long lines of ditch and rampart and other works of 

 Roman engineering were all evidently intended for defence and for 

 offering opposition to any hostile advance. The Roman remains indi- 

 cate that the population was mainly confined to the central chalk lands, 

 while the humid, forest-covered, swampy and probably unhealthy tracts 

 were then practically uninhabited except at the mih'tary stations along 

 the chief lines of communication. To the Romans we certainly owe the 

 introduction of the English elm, sweet chestnut, lime and poplar, which 

 are to be found thoroughly naturalized in the Hampshire woods along 

 with the indigenous oak, beech, birch, ash, aspen, alder, sallow, yew, and 

 minor trees and shrubs like hawthorn, holly, gorse and juniper. They 

 also introduced the plane and the walnut together with other ornamental 

 trees and fruit-bearers which never became of true woodland growth. 



There can be little doubt, however, that after the four centuries of 

 Roman occupation the Britons had adopted Roman methods of agricul- 

 ture, while the various Teutonic invaders Saxons, Angles, Jutes and 

 Frisians alike were still mostly dependent on their flocks and herds, 

 which fed themselves upon the herbage and mast of the woodlands. 



During the Saxon and the Danish periods the whole of the county, 

 except the wide stretches cleared on the chalk hills and the great swamps 

 and peat-bogs on the water-logged tracts, called Ytene or ' furze heaths ' 

 by the Saxons, was probably still thickly tree-clad, while the scanty 

 population was, in addition to the agriculture then practised, mainly 

 dependent on the woodlands for many kinds of food as well as for the 

 pannage of their large herds of swine which throve on the acorns and 

 beech-mast shed in autumn. The woods abounded with game, while 

 the chase, free to all, furnished nourishing food in plenty. 



As husbandry gradually began to acquire greater importance under 

 later Saxon rule, the enclosure of land became necessary for the improve- 

 ment of agricultural methods and for the protection of the crops, while 

 the beasts of chase were so far as possible kept out of such fields and 

 enclosures, and driven back into the recesses of the woodlands. This is 

 precisely what one now sees going on in other parts of the world, as in 

 the heart of the vast tree-jungles of Burma, where the scanty woodland 

 population is passing through (though under vastly different circum- 

 stances as to government and administration) a stage very similar to that 

 which existed in southern England about a thousand to fifteen hundred 

 years ago. As cultivation gradually spread patches of the woodland were 

 cleared and enclosures for cultivation extended, while the deer and other 

 game were driven back into the depths of the woods. In process of 

 time the woodlands, the great hunting-grounds, became something like 

 vast sanctuaries for the herds of deer, wild boar, and other beasts of 

 venery ; and gradually the most influential and powerful of the local men 

 usurped the rights of the common people, probably by first of all 

 restraining them from exercising such rights freely, and then ultimately 



