OUR ANCIENT WOODLANDS.
IT is beyond comprehension why the people of this country are not more practical and more sensitive than they are in the matter of our ancient and natural woodlands. There are very few of them left, they are unique, cannot be replaced, and even when in a measure protected are always in danger from the conscientious persons in charge of them, who, as recently at Burnham Beeches, either try to tidy them up, or cut out and thin what in their judgment cumbers the ground. Left to herself, Nature makes a very good selection in a wood, and all that is needed anywhere in natural forest to replenish the ground with every sort of natural tree is to put a fence round to keep cattle out, and then let them grow up after their kind. Fragments of the primeval forest which once covered the greater part of this country still remain scattered over England, and portions of the original Caledonian Fir Forest, which mysteriously disappeared from nearly all the Highlands, survive in the die. trict round Braemar and Rothiemurchus. An attempt to restore Stonehenge or to stick in a few more orna- mental stones, or a project to clear away Shakespeare's birthplace in order to let the site for building, would scarcely be more outrageous than the spoiling or destruction of these forest monuments, which were the same in kind and form as we see them to-day ages before Stone- henge was set up on Salisbury Plain. Yet except in the New Forest, Epping Forest, and Ashdown Forest, most of these are either in the hands of the Woods and Forests Office, whose officials might let them for building purposes, or are private property, and liable at any moment to be cut down or built upon, and are unprotected from fire, the great enemy of woods, which destroyed a portion of the remnant of the Caledonian Forest not many years ago. In some counties there are isolated and forgotten patches, sometimes only of a few acres, of our primeval forest, of the existence of which the public is quite unaware. In others these survivals of the days of Merlin and Vivien are subject to rights of common, rights of way, and other easements of the public, dating from days when such woods or thickets were only looked on as sources for fuel or for turning cattle loose upon, which make it difficult for the nominal owners to protect them from Unintended injury or disfigurement and encroachment. A sudden demand for building stone may cut up and ruin the face of some wooded common or hillside whose yews or junipers seem to date from the days of the Druids, or thickets on ground which sheltered the outlaws of Sher- wood may be burnt by the fires lighted by beanfeasters from a Midland factory. Such monuments of the past as old castles, and older relics like British camps and cairns, are now protected. Would it not be well that a list should be made out and lodged with the Home Office, and with the different Societies interested in preserving natural beauty, of those still more ancient monuments, the relics of our primeval woods ? It would in no way be interfering with the rights of private property, but would encourage the owners to preserve them and give them the chance of public support in doing so. The compilation and verifying of the claims and pedigree of such woodlands would be a work of singular interest. Their portraits might be taken under various aspects in summer and winter, and, bound with a description of their present state, might serve as guides and standards for their conservation in future generations, for whom we might affirm, if we did not, like Glasgerion, swear, "by oak, and ash, and thorn," that they should be kept and bequeathed as Nature made and continued them.
There is a great difference between ancient "forest," which was really a district under forest law, and ancient woodlands. It is of the latter, many of which are not now in " forests " at all, that we now speak, though the most beautiful generally are in the forests, because these have, in the main, been left absolutely to themselves. There is what is reputed to be, and probably is, a patch of the primeval forest right on the top of the Blackdown Hills, near Shute, in Devonshire, close to Seaton Junction. There is another in one of the most highly cultivated counties in England, not far from the Butley Creek, which runs into the river Ore in Suffolk. The ancient woods of Woohner Forest entirely disappeared, and were replanted. But the ex- quisite ." commons" which adjoin near Holly Water Clump are obviously part of the original forest as it grew on that particular ground. The trees are hollies, oaks, birch, and thorn, and under them bracken and bramble. The word " common " is, of course, another legal term, though, as only the very worst lands have usually been allowed to remain "common," we associate the name with starvation land which will hardly keep a donkey. Many Surrey commons are just as much in their original state as the wildest woods in the New Forest or the thickets near Theydon Bois in Epping Forest. They are quite good land, growing beautiful timber, and with pools of water; land which has never been cultivated or known what it is to undergo the discipline of the plough, the harrow, or the scythe. Between the Hammer Ponds near Godalming and Lord ,Midleton's park at Peper Harow on the Wey lies such a remnant, known as Royal Common. It bears fine oaks, . birches, and thorns; the ground is soft with bracken and heather, and gay with most lovely flowers. Probably the tops of our chalk downs were chosen for highways, such as the Ridgeway, before history began, simply because they stood clear and treeless above the mass of forest. But Surrey boasts at least oue example of what the hill forest of England was. It stands on the 3ferrow Downs above Guildford, five hundred feet above the sea, on the chalk. This forest relic, for such we must consider it, is absolutely natural wood, growing under natural conditions with such thickets as are only seen in woods of this character, though the nature of the soil and the height at which the trees stand tend to keep it far more open and clear than if it , were in a glen or lowland. In many parts the close turf runs right up to the bases of the trees. In others there is a growth of herbaceous plants, long grass, and brambles. The trees are yews, many of them of great age and size, oaks, ash, holly, and thorn. The thorns are in many cases draped with masses of eglantine, and wild
, clematis grows as thickly as a tropical creeper. Even where the ancient trees have been destroyed, as in the Forest of Woolmer, the mere fact that the soil has been left undisturbed makes such areas unlike any other places in England. Plants grow there which never are and never will be found on culti- vated land. Insects feed on those plants which can find no such food elsewhere, and so are never seen outside these anciently wild tracts, not only near the umbrageous woods of the New Forest, but in such flat lacustrine relics of the world of waters as Widen Fen. The old forest areas are almost the only places left in the South of England, except on the Devonshire moors, in which rivers and streams are seen in a natural condition, with their banks and beds and waters as they were "in the beginning." It is this which causes the extraordinary beauty of the New Forest springs and rivers, and the heads of the little tributaries. Elsewhere the surface of whole counties is undermined by drains, which throw off the water into the rivers, flood them, and kill the flowers on their banks, or tear them away ; or water companies and mills take the water, and leave the rivers half dry. In the old forests all the rain and dew is held and gently detained, first among the leaves, then in the deep loose soil below the trees, then passed on more slowly still to the springs or brooklets, and thence carried leisurely to the forest streams, which do not overflow, or tear or damage even the moss and ferns upon their banks. These banks are studded with violets, with primroses, with wood-sorrel, and with ferns to the water's lip. Where the little stream flows on, a flat, a marsh, is at once formed, marshes being things which outside these primitive areas are instantly abolished by means of drains and ditches. In this marsh the little stream saunters and stops round the natural vegetation of a marsh, which is alder. bushes, not willows, which do not grow in. the water, and round the alders it piles up mud, and on the mud grow certain sedges, while in the slowly moving pools water-crow- foot comes up in white stars.
One New Forest stream, near Maley Passage, which is all wild and untouched above the little bridge, was taken in hand by some one who thought it would be improved by having a Bounder bank, and some drains were cut, and a close row of piles driven in for some distance along the edge of the stream, which was straightened and deepened, the piles being driven so deep that they sank beneath the soil. First the hind began to dry, and then to shrink and sink, and the piles pushed their heads above ground, each carrying on the top a little cap of grassy turf. Somehow each of these tufts or caps, now standing some six inches above the soil, contained a vast number of eye-bright seeds, and the stream was fringed with little pillars, each with a capital of turf, bearing a crowded mass of blue eye-bright blossoms. This was reflected in the stream, and, set off by masses of yellow marsh mari- gold, made such aibrilliant river border as even the Forest cannot often show. This was Nature's revenge on the pleasant side. But if once the balance is seriously dis- turbed in these ancient woodlands nothing can restore it. That is why some form of County Return of such survivals would be a valuable addition to the inventory of our national collection of natural pictures.
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