ENCHANTED WOODS.
Many letters have reached me on the subject of the wood acquired by the Oxford Preservation Trust on Shotover Hill. I had suggested that its treatment might focus a discussion on such reserves. At present the public is most rigorously excluded. The object is in part to undertake a sort of pro- longed spring cleaning, and in part to enable the space to be used as a nursery for trees that may later clothe certain naked spaces thereabouts. In the future greater liberty to the public and the appointment of some warden or watcher may be meditated. It is, of course, very difficult to square liberty with preservation. A part of the public is desperately vandal : trees are defaced, flowers grubbed up and litter substituted ; but even this as yet uncured vandalism is not necessarily sufficient reason for the permanent reign of barbed wire and a principle of exclusion far beyond that of private ownership. After all, there is no law of trespass as such in England. The public must be educated to assist in preserva- tion. It is possible that much may be done by suitable notices, such as one sees in Holland. The sentiment against a too aristocratic exclusiveness is certainly one cause of the readiness to destroy. In general—or such is my experience— the best landowners suffer least and the worst most.
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