64 
NATURE NOTES. 
was made good use of by the lords of the manor. The Report 
so adverse to their interests was spark to the tinder, and in- 
closures on the commons round London proceeded apace. 
These high-handed actions led to the formation of the Com- 
mons Preservation Societ}^ in the autumn of the year 1865, at 
the instance of Mr. P. H. Lawrence. \\’ith a few short breaks 
l\Ir. Shaw-Lefevre has continued its chairman down to the 
present time, and has taken a large share in its proceedings. Its 
members soon had plent)' of good work to do. In a brief 
notice like this, we can give the merest resume of the adventures 
into which these defenders of public rights were led, and of their 
battles, nearly always successful, in the law courts. 
In the neighbourhood of London, Hampstead Heath was one 
of the first open spaces to suffer from inclosure. This was one 
of those commons where the ancient rights of litter-cutting and 
pasturage had fallen into disuse. But a suit was commenced 
against the lord of the manor. Sir Thomas IMaryon \Vilson, in 
the name of Mr. Gurney Hoare, an influential commoner, on 
behalf of other copyholders. This suit was never brought to a 
termination owing to the death of Sir Thomas Wilson, but a com- 
promise was effected with liis successor, and the Heath was 
saved. The circumstances of the noble addition of Parliament 
Hill and Fields, but a few years since, are also detailed. 
We must pass over the rescue of Berkhampstead Common 
from the encroachments of Lord Brownlow, and refer our 
readers to the thrilling narrative of Mr. Augustus Smith’s 
spirited action, in which our author had a share, of organising 
a party of men and sending them down from London to Berk- 
hampstead, at the dead of night, to break down the double row 
of fences which Lord Brownlow had erected, at the cost of 
£1,000, right across the common, enclosing 434 acres. 
Fortune favoured the Commons Society in their resistance 
of encroachments on, and in the ultimate preservation of, several 
other open spaces near and far from London. Plumstead and 
Tooting Commons and Bostall Heath, Wimbledon Common, 
Ashdown Forest and Malvern Hills, Coulsdon, Dartford and 
Wigley Commons, all remain in their primitb e state,^ but the 
trisected and mangled common of Wandsworth is but a brand 
plucked from the burning. 
From its large area, from the length of time during which the 
lawsuit dragged on that involved its fortunes as an open space, 
and from its wonderful natural beauty, Epping Forest stands 
out in the foreground of the canvas upon which we mentally 
depict the circle of waste grounds that girdle our great metro- 
polis. As we gaze in the bright blue sky of IMay, upon its rolling 
undulations covered with an unbroken stretch of greenery, save 
where the soft white masses of hawthorn show out in bold relief, 
it is hard to comprehend the Philistine spirit of those lords of the 
manors who strove to work its ruin thirty years ago. Together 
with Hainault Forest, the scene of l\Ir. Walter Besant's novel. 
