FORESTRY 143 



of woodland management in those days. Plant- 

 ing four feet apart, with nurses, draining and 

 all the rest of it came in long afterwards. The 

 ancient practice was simply to exclude all harmful 

 animals from the woodland, to encourage all the 

 natural seedling growth, of the proper kinds that 

 would assuredly spring up, and to cultivate and 

 realise that self-sown produce in various ways, 

 into which I will go presently. 



Every one of the beautiful old woods which 

 we admire so much as we ride through them in 

 summer, or revel in the cry of hounds that echoes 

 and resounds among the old timber in winter, is 

 the result of such a process of enclosing, encoppice- 

 ment, and cultivation as is prescribed in those 

 Acts of four hundred years ago that I have cited. 

 Whether it be Mark Ash, Bratley, or Eidley 

 Woods, Vereley or Hollands Wood, Matley or 

 Fair Crop or Bramshaw, it is all the same. With- 

 out the fostering fence and care, they never 

 could have come into existence, or survived the 

 ravages of the King's deer and commoners* cattle 

 and ponies. 



There are plenty of New Forest records to 

 show this. In 1542 we find an Exchequer order 

 from Wm. Paulet, Lord St. John, the Surveyor- 

 General of all the Crown woods, giving instruc- 

 tions to Robert Dome, Deputy Surveyor of the 



