CHAPTER XI 



FORESTRY 



AT the risk of being tedious, it is necessary to go 

 rather fully into the history of the sylviculture 

 of the New Forest, for most people have the 

 vaguest ideas as to how the various woods, espe- 

 cially the older and most beautiful areas, origi- 

 nated, and under what difficulties the growth 

 of trees was, at all times, carried on in the New 

 Forest. Especially the notion was, up to a cer- 

 tain date, entertained that all the more ancient 

 woods were "primeval forest," spontaneously 

 grown without the assistance of man. 



It is no wonder that such erroneous ideas 

 prevail when we find them endorsed and put 

 forward by such bodies as the Committee of 

 the House of Commons on the New Forest 

 question which sat in 1875. In more than one 

 report suggested for adoption it is roundly stated 

 that no cultivation of trees had ever existed in 

 the Forest prior to the Act of 1698, in William 

 Ill's time. The Committee seems to have ac- 

 cepted this view, in sheer ignorance of the 



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