68 
NATURE NOTES 
“ A sanctuary,” the Tripper said, 
“ Is what you chiefly need ; 
Hunting and shooting must be stopt : 
They’re very wrong indeed. 
Then beavers, antelopes and deer 
Could be turned down to breed.” 
“ My friend ’’—then said the Resident — 
“ We’ve had a pleasant run : 
We’d best be getting home again. 
Though creatures we’ve seen none.” 
(’Twas odd they never guessed how they 
Had frighten’d every one.) 
E. F. C. 
W. M. C. 
FOREST ADMINISTRATION. 
^^SlHE primaeval forests which covered a large portion of 
England were at various periods much reduced by the 
demands of an increasing population for agricultural 
land and for building sites. The very word field has 
been connected etymologically with felling. Such clearing was 
apparently active during both Roman and Early English times. 
The uncleared residue at the time of the Norman Conquest was 
apparently the land then practically valueless for agricultural 
purposes, owing to its being too light, too heavy, insufficiently 
drained, or too rocky ; and this is in the main the character of 
English forest land to-day. From the earliest settlement of 
the country, the forest land, unenclosed, and either ownerless, 
common property, or at least, subject to various customary ease- 
ments, was of the greatest utility to those who occupied the 
clearings or the purlieus. Wood, charcoal, peat and turf were 
the only fuel, wood the chief building material: wooden utensils 
were used in nine cases out of ten in which metal or earthenware 
is now employed : the pannage of mast and acorn fed that 
valuable asset, the swine ; and the herbage of forest glades or 
open heath furnished pasture for horse, ass, and horned cattle. 
The commoners’ rights which then arose constitute one of the 
great difficulties of forest administration at the present day, 
especially in the larger forest areas where villages exist entirely 
surrounded by woodland. Rights to top and lop, such as existed 
until commuted, in the Epping remnant of the great forest of 
Essex, were fatal to the growtli of healthy timber, and to much 
of the beauty of our woodlands. Turbary rights, as now 
exercised in the New Forest, in comparatively dry spots, where 
there is no true formation of peat, small as is their value in real 
yield of fuel, liave probably done much to so impoverish the 
land, by removing every vestige of organic accumulation, as to 
make it now well nigh incapable of supporting tree life. 
