Farming of Monmouthshire. 
281 
is considered salubrious in most parts. In the valleys a great 
portion of the soil is on a gravelly subsoil, and therefore free 
from the exhalations arising from a retentive and ill-drained 
swamp ; and though the air is keen and piercing on the mountain- 
ridges, it tends to brace and strengthen the animal system, and 
diffuses its salutary influence over the level districts." 
Woods. — The eastern part of the county, even now well tim- 
bered, was in former days celebrated for the extent of its forests. 
VVentwood still remains, but it is now shorn of the glories it 
possessed when, as Wentwood Chase (the demesnes and peculiar 
possession of the several successive kings and princes of Gwent), 
it was guarded from trespass or invasion, not only by the vigilant 
" keeper " of the day, but by strong forts and fortresses, which even 
now in their ruin encircle it. Then " all creatures called ' Feria 
Natura,^ as all kinds of deer and four-footed beasts, and birds 
and eagles, hawks and their airy swans, the heron and other wild 
fowl, bred therein." In later years " Charta Forresta " was made 
for the preservation of these ; and " did likewise ordain Swain- 
moth Courts to be kept thrice in the year, and that gwent-takers, 
foresters, and verderers, shall there appear to do their services ; 
and that every forty days within the year our foresters and ver- 
derers shall meet to see the attachments of the forest, as Avell as 
for greenhew as for the hunting of our deer," &c. But " the old 
order changeth, giving place to new;" and Wentwood Chase, 
which, when Henry Earl of Worcester hunted the wild deer there, 
was 7000 acres in area, is now an excellent fox-cover of a very 
much more limited extent. Doubtless the time is not far distant 
when this ancient chase, once such a noble and spacious nursery 
for timber, will entirely disappear ; and the wheat-plant will 
cover those undulating acres of clay, where the oak-tree still 
grows so well. 
There are extensive Avoods and plantations on the estates of His 
Grace the Duke of Beaufort, Lord Tredegar, the Herberts of 
Llanarth, and others, all of which are managed with great care 
and skill. 
On the steep declivities of the mountain sides, larch has, since 
the days of Bishop Watson, been planted with considerable 
success ; and thus land, which in its natural state will scarcely 
support a goat, is brought to supply the extensive coal-districts 
of the neighbourhood with excellent pit-wood. 
On all the principal estates, woods, or coppices as they are 
termed, are held by the landlord amongst the farms let to the 
tenantry ; and consequently, independently of the profit arising 
from this source, many localities, which would otherwise be bare 
and leafless as a desert, are, to the gratification of the inhabitants, 
clothed with forest-trees. 
