62 
NATURE NOTES. 
ranges and drill grounds, first on land of limited extent and for 
Volunteer forces only, then on areas of greater extent, for both 
the Regular forces and Volunteers, the rights of commoners 
still being respected, till finally the limitation area has been 
abolished, and the rights of commoners over these practising- 
grounds suspended for as long as the land is leased to the 
War Office. 
The friends of open spaces and the rights of wa}', through 
no fault of their own, failed to perceive that the elements of a 
storm were brewing^ — not a storm of nature against man, but of 
man against nature. We owe it to certain leading articles in 
the T imes, which appeared last December, and to an urgent pro- 
test from IMr. Herbert Goss, in the shape of a letter to several 
of the other daily papers, that the tactics of the War Office are 
now made full}’^ known. In the words of one of the leading 
articles of the Times, “the powers exerciseable under the pre- 
vious Acts, sufficiently large in all conscience, may henceforth 
be exercised with respect to any lands ‘ notwithstanding any 
prohibition or restriction contained in any local or personal Act, or in any 
Act specially relating to such land, and notwithstanding any common or 
other rights or easements over the land.' ” The whole matter there- 
fore lies in a nutshell, so to speak. The clause of the Ranges 
Act (1891), quoted from the Times, and here given in italics, 
(without mentioning any names, though the framers of the Act 
must have been well aware of what was intended) entirely sub- 
verts the main clauses of the New Forest Act (1877), which are 
as follows : — 
“ That the New Forest shall remain open and unenclosed, 
except to the extent to which it is expedient to maintain the 
existing right of the Crown to plant trees. That the ancient 
ornamental woods and trees shall be carefully preserved, and the 
character of the scener\^ shall be maintained. 
“ That the powers of inclosure conferred by statute shall be 
exercised only on that area which has hitherto been taken at 
various times.” 
The New Forest Act of 1877 was passed deliberate!}", after 
ten years’ discussion and inquiry. It was considered a final 
settlement of all the long disputes between the rights of the 
Crown and those of the commoners ; yet it is to be undone by 
an Act, the outcome of a Bill literally rushed through both 
Houses of Parliament at the fag end of the session of 1891, 
and the first-fruits of it are the appropriation of 800 acres of the 
New Forest by the War Office. The most telling point in the 
secrecy with which the orders as regards the New Forest are to 
be carried out lies in the fact that no notice, official or other- 
wise. was given to Lord ^lontagu of Beaulieu, the Chief 
\'erderer, whose court was specially re-constituted by the Act 
of 1877 to regulate the commoners’ rights over the Forest. 
It now remains to lay before our readers some of the results 
that will follow this cleverly concocted arrangement between 
