24 
NATURE NOTES. 
lands and meadows at present in existence are the following : 
the Lammas Lands of Hackney (Hackney Downs, London 
Fields, Hackney Marshes, &c.), the Common Fields of Barrow- 
den and South and North Luffenham in Rutlandshire, of 
Steventon, Berkshire, and Riccall, Yorkshire, amounting in all 
to nearly 4,600 acres, divided into between 7,000 and 8,000 strips. 
Common fields cannot be inclosed under the Statute of Merton 
and Westminster the Second, and the only two grounds upon 
which such an inclosure can be justified are (i) upon the consent 
of any person having a legal interest or right in the land inclosed, 
(2) a custom enabling the owner of any plot in the common to 
inclose and enjoy his plot in severalty on condition that he 
abandons his right of depasturing over the rest of the field during 
the open season. 
A sketch is next given of the waste or commonable lands of a 
forest. It is easier and simpler to believe that those splendid 
tracts of woodland and heath known as the royal forests are 
remnants of primaeval nature, than to suppose they were wastes 
created for the king’s pleasure. Appropriated as such they 
certainly were, but the fact that rights of common have been 
enjoyed by the commoners over the whole of the wastes, 
irrespective of the manors of which they were composed, points 
to their remote antiquity. Successful proof that these indis- 
criminate rights had always been enjoyed led to the restitution 
of half the original acreage of Epping Forest in the great suit of 
the Corporation of the City of London. Common of pasture is 
the only universal right enjoyed on the wastes of the royal forests, 
but in most there exists that of pannage for pigs, or the sending 
them into the forest to feed on mast — the fruit of oak and beech. 
In Epping Forest the right of lopping or cutting fuel from under- 
wood, which was successfully contested in the case of Willingale 
V. Maitland* is most remarkable,! and the right of cutting turf 
in the New Forest is greatly valued. The privilege of cutting 
furze and heather was successfully upheld by the commoners of 
Ashdown Forest, in the suit of Lord De la Warr v. Miles. 
Taken altogether, it is far easier to prove forestal than manorial 
rights on a waste not a forest, as the former are infinitely more 
extensive. 
Village greens are scattered over the length and breadth of 
our land — nay, there are town greens as well ! even in London 
some fragments of them remain, thanks to the efforts of the 
Metropolitan Public Gardens Association and kindred societies 
— not excepting the Selborne Society. Their obvious purpose 
is that of recreation. When this right is contested, it must be 
* English Commons and Forests, by G. J. Shaw-Lefevre, M.P., p. 126. 1S94. 
+ The author is wrong in his statement that that right is actually in existence 
at the present day. It exists only in principle, compensation having been 
awarded the commoners for its extinction, as its undoubted validity was upheld in 
court of law. See English Commons and Forests, pp. 152-57. 1894. 
