80 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



from Queen Elizabeth's Lodge to near the town of 

 Epping. North and west of the Lodge are nearly three 

 hundred acres of illegally enclosed fields, now dreary 

 fallows and poor pastures, but with fine slopes affording 

 opportunity for producing new effects of forest-scenery. To 

 the west and south of Loughton village are more extensive 

 enclosures of several hundred acres of land, much of it 

 arable or pasture land of good quality ; and further north, 

 near Theydon Church and on towards Epping, are other 

 enclosures of less extent, and almost all of this will again 

 be thrown open to the forest. 



To the north of the road from Loughton to High Beech 

 there is a vast extent of rough forest-land, nearly three 

 miles long and from half a mile to a mile wide, which 

 has all been recovered after having been illegally enclosed 

 by the lords of the manors, but not before they have de- 

 nuded large portions of it of everything deserving the 

 name of a tree, and left it a scrubby waste without any 

 pretensions to sylvan beauty. Here are square miles of 

 land, once as luxuriant as the unenclosed portions further 

 west, but now presenting a hideous assemblage of stunted 

 mop-like pollards rising from a thicket of scrubby bushes. 



From this brief sketch of the present condition of Epping 

 Forest (1878), with more especial reference to the newly 

 recovered portions of it, we find, that probably not much 

 less than a thousand acres, which are now or have recently 

 been enclosed and cultivated fields, will soon be thrown into 

 the forest ; while, in addition to this, there are considerably 

 more than a thousand acres which are almost entirely 

 denuded of trees and in a generally unsightly condition. 

 The question at once arises How can these wide tracts 

 of land be best dealt with for the future recreation and 

 enjoyment of the public ? The Act of Parliament, it is 

 true, empowers the conservators to form playgrounds and 

 cricket-grounds in suitable places, and some portion of these 

 lands may be so applied. But a very few acres will serve 

 for this purpose, or indeed are at all suitable for it ; and 

 there will remain by far the larger portion to be otherwise 

 dealt with. After all the agitation, all the arduous legal 

 struggles, all the liberal, nay, lavish, expenditure of money 



