FORESTRY AND THE NEW FOREST 



wood of the older of which is beech, while oak predominates in the 

 younger plantations. Many of the low-lying parts were planted with 

 oak and Scots pine, which have now practically become pure pinewoods. 



The planting of larch has not proved successful in the New Forest. 

 A fair quantity of it was planted about forty to fifty years ago, but it often 

 began to get unsound at about thirty to forty years of age. It is therefore 

 considered best to cut it as soon as it has become marketable, otherwise 

 the butt of the stem has often to be shortened by about six feet to 

 cut off the part diseased owing to the unsuitability of soil and situation, 

 which are really much better suited for Scots pine and Douglas fir. 



Hants is fairly well provided with remarkable trees, though the 

 celebrated oaks in the New Forest are comparatively few over so great 

 an area, and are not so high or large as in many other parts of England. 

 But they make up for this by the picturesqueness of their outlines. 

 Boldrewood contains three well known oaks, the 'Western Oak' girth- 

 ing 24 feet 9 inches, the ' Eastern Oak ' girthing 1 6 feet, and the 

 'Northern Oak' measuring 14 feet 8 inches near its base and 20 feet 

 4 inches at a thick part higher up ; while the ' Knightwood Oak ' 

 girths 17 feet 4 inches. 1 A few yards outside the forest boundary stands 

 the ' Moyle's Court Oak,' a handsome tree with a girth of 18 feet 8| 

 inches. The last remains of the celebrated ' Cadnam Oak,' which was 

 famed for putting out young leaves on old Christmas morning, dis- 

 appeared about twelve years ago. The tree that is now wrongly 

 called the ' Cadnam Oak ' on the Ordnance Survey maps stands a 

 little to the north of the Southampton road, where it is crossed by 

 that to Ringwood. It is apparently not yet a very old tree, as it 

 only girths io| feet at 4! feet above the ground. The ' Oakley 

 Oak,' in a meadow to the east of Oakley farmhouse near Mottis- 

 font Abbey, has a girth of 31! feet at the same height, but the 

 stem is hollow. The ' Seven Yards Oak,' girthing 2 1 feet at 4^ feet 

 above ground, stands in Hurstbourne Park near Whitchurch. But by 

 no means the least remarkable of the Hampshire oaks is one known as 

 ' Canon Beadon's Oak,' in the rectory grounds of North Stoneham near 

 Southampton, which was planted by the late Canon Beadon when a 

 schoolboy fourteen years old. Before he died in 1879 he sat under its 

 shade and watched a cricket match in his hundredth year, eighty-five 

 years after he had planted it. In 1893 * ts gi ft ^ was J 1 ^ eet 3 inches at 

 4^ feet above the ground. 



The arboricultural condition of the private woodlands varies greatly. 

 Some of the copses are well stocked, but the storing of standard trees 

 has been irregular, and the coppices have often been allowed to fall into 

 a thinly-stocked condition as prices for underwood fell. In this respect 

 the present condition of English arboriculture is far below what it was 

 two centuries ago. Then far greater attention was given to the storing 

 of timber trees (as is clearly proved by Evelyn's Sy/va), while the under- 



1 John Smith, in Trans, of Royal Scottish Arboricultural Society (1893), xiii. 42. 

 H 465 59 



