RADICAL CHANGE FORESHADOWED 35 



management, will continue for any length of time to be 

 what it is and has been just that and nothing more. 

 A district in England, it is true, but out of the way, 

 remote, a spot to be visited once or twice in a lifetime 

 just to look at the scenery, like Lundy or the Scilly 

 Isles or the Orkneys. But it cannot be believed. The 

 place itself, its curious tangle of ownership ; government 

 by and rights of the crown, of private owners, commoners, 

 and the public, is what it has always been ; but many 

 persons have now come to think and to believe that the 

 time is approaching when there will be a disentangle- 

 ment and a change. 



The Forest has been known and loved by a limited 

 number of persons always ; the general public have only 

 discovered it in recent years. For one visitor twenty 

 years ago there are scores, probably hundreds, to-day. 

 And year by year, as motoring becomes more common, 

 and as cycling from being general grows, as it will, to be 

 universal, the flow of visitors to the Forest will go on at 

 an ever-increasing rate, and the hundreds of to-day will 

 be thousands in five years' time. With these modern 

 means of locomotion, there is no more attractive spot 

 than this hundred and fifty square miles of level country 

 which contains the most beautiful forest scenery in 

 England. And as it grows in favour in all the country 

 as a place of recreation and refreshment, the subject of 

 its condition and management, and the ways of its 

 inhabitants, will receive an increased attention. The 

 desire will grow that it shall not be spoilt, either by the 



