224 
Epping Forest : 
[April, 
questionable claims to public utility. We are told that 
no part of the forest is at present beyond the distance 
of one and a half mile from a railway station, whilst 
from Loughton a good road — crowded at holiday time 
with public conveyances — leads to the very High Beech 
which certain philanthropists think not sufficiently ac- 
cessible. 
Tavern accommodation, too, is ample. We have heard 
it whispered that there are certain plots of freehold land 
near High Beech, which, should the railway lately proposed 
be sanctioned, would greatly rise in value, for the very 
purpose of erecting more houses for the sale of intoxicants. 
It is said that this prospeCt is not unconnected with the 
piece of Vandalism which the House of Commons .has for 
this season disposed of. Now we think it may safely be 
asserted that the more taverns are allowed to spring up in 
and near the Forest, the more disorder will take place, and 
the more the “ rough ” element will be attracted to the 
locality to the annoyance and disgust of all decent people, 
whether “ butterfly hunters” or not. We think that from 
this point of view the friends of Temperance might wisely 
co-operate with the lovers of Nature in seeking to prevent 
any further desecration of the Forest. For those whose 
main holiday amusement consists in being drunk “ with 
drunken knaves ” there is already, both in London and its 
outskirts, most ample provision. 
But there is a further danger : even supposing railway- 
direCtors and tram-companies are for ever debarred from 
encroaching upon the Forest, we may possibly find that by 
substituting the reign of the so-called Conservators for 
that of lords of the manors we have merely exchanged 
King Log for King Stork. The encroachers gradually stole 
the land, but they did not spoil what was left. Now, as 
one of our contributors endeavoured to show in our 
number for June, 1882 (page 341), and as Mr. Meldola has 
explained more clearly in his paper above mentioned, the 
aCtion of the Conservators has been directed not to the 
preservation of the Forest in its original state, but to its 
“ artificialisation,” — i.e., its conversion into a “ peoples’ 
park.” Now parks, “ peoples’ ” or otherwise, exist already 
about London in considerable numbers, and, as compared 
with streets and houses, they are a relief to the eye. But 
as compared with a piece of natural forest they are to the 
last degree tame, formal, and monotonous. The Con- 
servators, instead of ruining the Forest and banishing its 
