ENGLISH FORESTRY IN THE PAST 3 



through the western edge of the Wiltshire Downs to the 

 Valley of the Frome. The line of the Severn was blocked 

 above Worcester by the Forest of Wyre, which extended 

 northward to Cheshire, while the Avon skirted the border of 

 a mighty woodland, of which Shakespeare's Arden became 

 the dwindled representative, and which all but covered the 

 area of the present Warwickshire. Away to the east the 

 rises of Highgate and Hampstead formed the southern edge 

 of a forest tract that stretched without a break to the Wash, 

 and thus almost touched the belt of woodland which ran 

 athwart Mid Britain in the forests of Eockingham and 

 Charnwood, and in the Brunewald of the Lincoln Heights. 

 The northern part of the province was yet wilder and more 

 inaccessible than part of the south, while Sherwood and 

 Need wood filled the space between the Peak and the Trent. 

 The Vale of York was pressed between the moorlands of 

 Pickering and the waste or desert which stretched from the 

 Peak of Derbyshire to the Koman Wall, and beyond the Wall 

 to the Forth the country was little more than a vast 

 wilderness of moorland and woodland, which later times knew 

 as the Forest of Selkirk." 



In fact, the whole of England in prehistoric times might 

 have been divided into three classes 1st, open down or heath ; 

 2nd, woodland or forest ; and 3rd, marsh or swamp. The 

 downs were represented then, as they are to-day, by the chalk 

 ranges of Kent, Hants, Wilts, and Herts, and the oolitic 

 hills of the Cotswolds. The heaths were found on the sand- 

 covered chalk of the Lincolnshire Wolds, the drift of 

 Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk, and the poorer soils of the 

 Tertiary and recent formations. But it must not be taken 

 too much for granted that either of these comparatively open 

 tracts of country were originally treeless. While the nature 

 of the soil prohibited the growth of large timber, and 

 facilitated early attempts at clearing, it probably maintained 

 a great deal of scrub which deserved the title of " forest " as 

 much as the more fertile land. We have patches of natural 

 woodland on our chalk downs to-day which have every appear- 

 ance of being the remains of primeval forest, and it is 

 impossible to say what denuding effect the grazing of countless 

 generations of sheep upon them has had. The heath-covered 



