8o 
THE ESSEX NATURALIST. 
There is evidence in local and county floras that the birch 
was not a common tree in the Forest during the seventeenth, 
eighteenth, and for at least three-quarters of the nineteenth 
centuries, although it grew in the sixteenth century in sufficient 
quantity to make it profitable for felling with other trees. The 
late W. C. Waller, in “ Monk Wood in Loughton ; a Frag¬ 
ment of Forest History,” 6 quotes the following verdict given 
in relation to Forest woodland in 1582. “ We say that there 
is a wood uppon the waste soyle of the said mannor called 
Muncke Wood, containing as it is measured fifty-three acres, 
sixty five poles at twenty-one foote to the pole: whereof there 
is waste ground in the same that beareth no wood by estimacion 
fifteen acres ; which said wood hath been sold to Mr. Wroth, 
who felled the same. The nature and kind of the woodd so felled 
was most oke, beach, hornebeame, and birch.” 
The waste acreage still exists, the ground is swampy and 
covered with the grass Molinia caerulea. There is evidence of 
pan in this area as there is in that treeless portion south of the 
keeper’s cottage already mentioned. 
Warner, in his PlantaeW oodfordienses, 1771, writes respecting 
the genus Betula, “ Found on the Forest between High Beach 
and Golden Hill in the parish of Loughton, in general not very 
common.” Specimens of birch in the Edward Forster herba¬ 
rium, now incorporated in that of the British Museum, were 
collected, not in open spaces within the Forest, but on the edge 
of the woodland. The specimens are labelled, one Hale End 
1794, and another Theydon Mount. The former station is on 
the southern boundary, the latter is to the north-east, quite outside 
the limits of the Forest as determined by the Perambulation 
of the 17th Charles 1st (1641). Birch was recorded on the 
same authority from Coopersale and Park Hall, on the north¬ 
eastern boundary. At Theydon it was growing plentifully. 
Gibson’s Flora of Essex (1862), gives Betula, white birch, re¬ 
corded from Stratford, in botanical district IV., fide J. Freeman, 
and near Epping, H. Doubleday, in addition to Edward Forster’s 
localities. 
On the western side of the Forest, in the counties of Middlesex 
and Hertfordshire, the birch was not plentiful. Trimen, Flora 
of Middlesex (1869), states “ Betula alba rather rare ” ; no records 
6 Essex Naturalist, v. 1891, p. 17}. 
