134 
NATURE NOTES. 
Her Majesty’s Government that such a school should be established. I went to 
the great French forestry schools, and also to Switzerland, and when I explained 
that I had come to see their organisations, and told them that we had nothing of 
the kind, it was some time ere I could get them to believe me. “You have,” 
they said, “a larger area of forests than we, but where do the men who manage 
them get their education?” And it does seem the most astounding thing that we 
are the only country in Europe without a school of forestry. We cannot establish 
such schools by private enterprise because we cannot establish them without access 
to a forest, and that. Government alone can give. This is, therefore, a case in 
which instruction must be conducted by the State. It is an important economic 
question. Our woods are being gradually diminished. No doubt thousands of 
acres might be planted, especially in Scotland and Ireland, with profit and with 
great advantage to the scenery of the country. 
In the Transactions of the Scottish Arboricultiiral Society there is an interesting 
paper by Mr. Lascelles, the Ranger of the New Forest, who points out that he is 
forbidden by law to enclose any land therein, except special areas. There being 
no enclosure of land no fresh planting is possible, for it need hardly be said that 
lis useless to plant single trees in a district of that kind without enclosure. My 
friend Mr. Auberon Herbert has written a good deal about the New Forest and 
has said that you ought to leave it to nature ; but what we are really doing is to 
leave it to the pigs and ponies, which, as Mr. Lascelles shows, eat up the young 
trees as soon as they appear. If we had really left the New Forest to nature we 
should have left the carnivorous animals there, which would have kept down the 
pigs and the ponies ; there would then have been a balance of nature. But we 
have killed olt the bears and wolves and have left the young trees at the mercy of 
their enemies. Mr. Lascelles in his interesting paper tells us what is happening 
to the New Forest, the largest and most beautiful we have left. “ These woods,” 
he says, “.are hastening to their end ; they are being slowly destroyed by -\ct of 
Parliament.” Unless something is done that will be the inevitable result. I 
make no attack upon the management. I find no fault with Mr. Lascelles, who, 
as he has shown, is powerless. The curious and interesting point of it is that the 
interest of the commoners, which is supposed to be protected by the present state 
of things, would be improved by a better system. If, for instance, we were to shut 
up one-third or one-fourth for twenty years, then a second third, and so on ; always 
keeping one-third shut up, the young trees would grow and we should not only 
retain our beautiful woodland scenery, but it would be better for the commoners 
because the grass is now getting ever ranker and coarser, whereas if the trees 
were allowed to grow, the grass would be much richer and better : so that the 
commoners with only two-thirds or three-quarters of the present area, would 
really get more grass on it than they now do on the whole. I cannot help thinking 
that it is a duty we owe to those who preceded us and to those who come after us 
alike to take some such remedial steps. M. Boppe, the great F'rench authority 
on forestry, who visited the New Forest some years ago, wrote a Report on it, in 
which he declared that 49,000 acres of woodland there would in fifty years be 
nothing but a barren waste. This matter seriously demands the attention of the 
Government. It is a sad and cruel thing that such a possession should be gradually 
allowed to drift into inevitable ruin. 
Epping Forest. 
.Another forest nearer to you is Epping Forest, which has been preserved by 
the energy and expenditure of the Corporation of the City of London. Many of 
you may have seen not long ago an energetic correspondence in the papers re- 
ferring to what has been done there and to the thinnings which have been made. 
I went down there a fortnight ago and we went over the ground with the ver- 
derers and others who are interested, and I am bound to say, after looking 
carefully over it, that, in our judgment, the thinning has been judiciously done, 
that only comparatively poor trees have been removed to give greater head-room 
for the finer specimens, and that in fact many more will eventually have to be cut 
down. But this will be no loss, for one good tree is worth half a dozen bad ones. 
\Ve are all indebted to tbe verderers of the forest for their care and attention, 
and fifty years hence, if the present arrangement continues, it will be in a finer and 
more beautiful condition than at present. 
