Agricultural Capabilities of the New Forest. 
251 
57*G per cent, evaporated. The evaporation was, of course, 
greatest during the six summer inontlis, when it amounted to 
nearly i)3 per cent, of the fall, while, in the six winter months — 
October to March inclusive — little more than one-fourth evapo- 
rated. In six of these years out of eight there was no filtration 
during four of the summer months. 
At present no doubt a large portion of the rainfall of the 
winter months remains in the bogs and low places of the Forest 
to be evaporated dui'ing the summer. This would be dealt with 
under a different system, and discharged into the watercourses, 
and the climate thereby greatly improved, 
XI. The Cultivation of the Forest. 
We now approach the most important, and at the same time 
the most difficult, branch of our subject, i.e., the agricultural 
value of the land in the New Forest, and the means for its 
improvement. Were we to rely on the expressed opinions of 
many gentlemen living within and around the district in ques- 
tion, and whose opportunities for gaining information are by no 
means to be despised, we should have to record the most dis- 
cordant and contradictory opinions ; and it would be difficult 
indeed for a stranger to find his way to the truth through such a 
chaos of ideas. Some will insist that the soil throughout only 
requires capital and labour (both of which it is contended would 
be remunerative) in order to convert it, if not into a garden, at 
any rate into fertile land, not inferior to the best of the sur- 
rounding properties. Others boldly maintain quite the opposite 
0])inion, and contend that, with the exception of some of the 
land now covered with timber, the remainder is a waste, inca- 
pable of redemption, that it would never repay the expense 
of breaking up, and that it is not worth more than Is. O'rf. per 
acre. Such opinions as the last have been expressed by those 
who possess forest rights^ who exercise the right of pasturage, 
and who do not wish to relinquish these rights, but express a 
great idea of their value. Such opposite views, however, 
appear to negative one another; for surely if the land is of little 
or no value, the rights thereon can scarcely be worth retention. 
It must surely be the interest of the commoners, if they wish 
to secure good compensation for their claims, to enhance, rather 
than to depreciate, the quality of the land and the goodness 
of the pasturage. Probably there never was a case in which 
the truth of the motto was better illustrated — 
" In medio tutissinins ibis." 
It may, I think, be taken as a fact, that all the land occupied 
by furze would pay to break up and cultivate, and that much of 
