1882.] from a Naturalist's Point of View . 343 
But even such an inferior flora of docks and nettles and 
thistles, of groundsel and plantain and dandelions, in lieu of 
the vanished primrose and cowslip, of wood-anemone and 
blue-bell, of sweet-briar and woodbine, will not be allowed 
to spring up. Under present auspices the waste must re- 
main a waste. It is not the visitors to the forest who hinder 
the restorative process, but the cattle, horses, and even 
goats, which browse here. Every seedling is safe to be 
trodden down or bitten off. On the other hand, the grass, 
being continually eaten short, grows more compact, and its 
democratic organisation leaves no opening for a richly varied 
flora to spring up. The cattle occasion another nuisance in 
the forest, in addition to limiting the number of vegetable 
species that can flourish. There are, namely, many narrow 
openings in the dense bushes, forming, as it were, gateways 
from one sheltered glade to another. Such places are neces- 
sarily screened from sun and wind, and if there is the 
smallest rill or pool the cattle convert the ground into an 
almost impassable quagmire. Hence it is desirable that the 
right of pasturage should be extinguished in the forest, as 
well as that of lopping the trees and digging for gravel. If 
this can be done, and if the seeds of our native trees, shrubs, 
and wild flowers were liberally scattered over the ground in 
favourable weather, it is possible that our great-grandchildren 
may see these desecrated portions of the forest become once 
more, in old-fashioned phrase, “ fit to be seen.” 
But independently of the restoration of these parts of the 
public territory, there is a very important question as to the 
preservation of the whole. In what state is it to be open 
for ever for the recreation of Her Majesty’s subjects ? As a 
specimen of free, wild forest, — -a portion of England of the 
olden time, such as it was in the Roman and Saxon days ? 
Or is it to be converted into something like a modern park, 
consisting of a stretch of grass, dotted over with trees, — 
possibly fine ones, — but divested of its thickets and of its 
multiplicity of vegetation ? Certain omens lead me, as well 
as others, to fear that the latter view is finding favour with 
the Conservators. It is ominous that the pools are being 
drained, that a lake with artificial islands has been formed 
in one of the low-lying portions of the forest, that its borders 
are planted with shrubs quite out of keeping with the abori- 
ginal vegetation, and that in certain parts — e.g., not far 
from the “ Woodman,” at the top of Sewardstone Green — 
a rather extensive plot of forest has been stripped of the 
bushes which grew between the trees. On these subjects 
certain correspondence has appeared in the “ Standard,” 
