: chosen "it is a day that suits children; it is quieter." One vanowner told the Committee of '63 that he has been in the habit of taking these parties down there for twenty-five years: I have had 30 or 40 in a day-different schools." He had once sent 60 vans, each van holding from 35 to 40 children. Very naturally he thinks large inclosures of the forest "would be a great deprivation to the working men of the metropolis, and a very great injury to our trade too in the summer." It has been said that these holiday-makers do not penetrate far into the forest, and that for them it would be enough to have open spaces of moderate size at the chief places of resort. But this is a fallacy. The forest is so favourite a resort because it is a forest, and those who do not wander far within it know they could do so if they pleased, and regard it with the more respect in consequence. If it were a mere park or paddock, they would as soon go to Victoria Park or Battersea. And this is a sound healthy feeling, which it would be wrong to discourage. The more the pent-up myriads of London can be brought into contact with "free nature's grace," the better for them morally as well as physically. If the liking for holiday rambling in the green fields and forest ways were more developed, there would be less sotting at the road-side public-houses. Doubtless there may be seen far too much" tipsy mirth and jollity" among the holiday-makers at the forest inns; but the preventive for that lies in better teaching, not in uprooting the forests. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that it is only in holiday crowds the east-enders flock to the forest. A genuine love of untrammelled nature is as strong among them as among any other section of Londoners, perhaps stronger. Solitary ramblers, young men two or three together, a father with a boy or two, humble naturalists searching for "specimens," butterfly and insect hunters, gatherers of rare ferns, moss and lichen collectors, botanists-in the least-frequented and most out-of-the-way nooks of the old forest you would meet them, plying diligently their several pursuits; and if you could induce them to talk, you would often find they had learned there more of nature's secrets than many a more pretentious professor had acquired from books. But how much the working classes of the east value their forest has come out also pretty strongly in their earnest and bitter speaking at the "indignation meetings" they have been holding, to protest against its demolition. It is time, however, to turn to the sister forest, HAINAULT FOREST— Henholt as it seems of old to have been called-comprised in 1851 about 4,000 acres of uninclosed land. The greater part of it was covered with lopped oak and hornbeam, as seems to have been the case all over Waltham Forest for centuries; but there were broad, wild, commonlike tracts overgrown with gorse and ling, and in some parts, oak, ash, and beech grew unpruned and of great size. Hainault was reported by the commissioners, in 1792, to be particularly well fitted for the growth of oak for the navy. It was in Hainault Forest, it may be remembered, that the east-enders' famous saturnalia, Fairlop Fair, was held, "on the first Friday in July," originally under the spreading branches of a huge oak. "It was eight fathoms round, spread an acre of ground," as the old Fairlop song told; and was devoutly believed by the fairgoers to have received its designation from Queen Anne, who once visited it, when, somewhat unpoetically, "After viewing it round from the bottom to the top, Unlike Epping, nearly three-fourths of Hainault Forest, technically known as the King's Woods, belonged to the crown, Henry VIII. having reserved for his own pleasaunce this manor of the monks of Barking, when he deprived them of house and lands: and being crown property it had been little encroached on, though utterly neglected. In 1851 it was as wild a little forest (about ten times as large as Hyde Park) as one could hope to meet with within a dozen miles of such a city as London. But in that year it was resolved to disafforest it. An Act was obtained by the Government giving the necessary powers to remove or destroy the deer, cut down the timber, inclose and appropriate the land, make roads, and grant compensation for the loss of forestal and common rights. By award of the commissioner appointed to carry out the provisions of the Act, the crown received (Nov. 1852), in lieu of its forestal and other rights, an allotment of 1,870 acres. Other portions of the land were about the same time awarded, but its ultimate apportionment was not effected till 1861, or 1862, under the provisions of a second Act, passed in 1858, when the remainder of the King's Woods was divided among the forest parishes and landowners. The entire area ultimately obtained by the crown amounts to 2,040 acres (three and a half square miles), forming a compact estate north of Aldborough Hatch. According to the Hon. C. Gore, the commissioner of woods and forests under whose care the property was placed, when allotted to the crown it was an open tract, thickly covered with timber and underwood. "I think there were upwards of 100,000 trees, oak, hornbeam, and the like;" but the soil was "in a very wet state, totally unproductive of anything but timber." The work of reclamation commenced in August, 1853. By the Act of 1851 the crown took the whole of the timber over the King's Woods. This sufficed to pay the entire cost both of the disafforesting, and of the subsequent works. The timber on the 969 acres of common allotments produced nearly 21,000l., and defrayed all the preliminary expenses, compensations to officers (among whom the warden received 5,000l.), commoners, &c. The crown allotment was cleared of its timber, thoroughly drained and fenced, converted into a farm, and "excellent farm buildings erected;" the cost, about 42,000l., being covered by the proceeds of the timber felled on the estate, and a small balance left in hand. The farm itself, "the Crown Farm," as it is called, was let on a lease for thirty-one years, at a rental of 4,000l. a year. Prior to the Act of 1851, the income from the occasional cutting down of timber in the King's Woods was about 500l. a year. Regarded as a matter of revenue-and the Board of Woods and Forests steadfastly refuses to admit that it has any other functions than those of a department of revenue"-the conversion of the crown lands in Hainault Forest into a farm, must be considered as a profitable transaction. Whether for the sake of a profit of 3,5007. a year, it was worth the while of a nation, with an income like that of England, to destroy a forest which all the wealth of England could not replace, which in many respects was unique in its beauty, and which was the resort every summer of hundreds of thousands of the classes most needing a pleasant and easily accessible place of healthy recreation, is a matter which even the hardiest political economist might hesitate to affirm. Be that as it may, the board in their wisdom have effected a marvellous transformation in the aspect of the place. The other day it was a woodland waste, densely covered with trees-as may be supposed from the sum they produced-in parts, as the commissioner said, " in a very wet state" (though that was rather the consequence of the commissioners' neglect of all drainage, than any peculiarity of the soil), but everywhere affording the most delicious strolls, and even in its moistest hollows abounding in trees, richly clothed with many-coloured lichens, golden and crimson-spotted fungi, "and creeping mosses and clambering weeds." Now you have a level tract, over which the eye wanders unchecked and unrelieved, laid out in formal rectangular plots, and intersected by long, straight roads, without so much as a field-path to break the oppressive monotony, or enable you to escape for a few minutes from the choking dust, or a tree to shelter you from the scorching heat, a flower to stoop to gather, or a song-bird to listen to. There are farm buildings indeed, but they are designed after the type of a factory, before factories were made ornamental; and a block of labourers' dwellings, but in their naked propriety more like the prim, charity-stamped building of some philanthropic institution, or the "model cottages" of Kennington and Shadwell, than the picturesque, though probably less salubrious, cottages we are accustomed to associate with farm-houses and country walks. No doubt it is all perfectly correct, and exactly what a scientific agriculturist or a commissioner of woods and forests would have it to be; but to any one else, instead of being as it was, one of the most charming spots of its kind in the kingdom, it is one of the ugliest and most wearisome. Of Hainault Forest there only remains to recall its ancient condition to the memory a wretched fragment near Barking Side, broken up in all directions by cart-ruts; two or three uninclosed strips by Chigwell Row, a pretty little bit of Crab-tree Wood on the way to Lambourn, and perhaps one or two outlying and miserable scraps. A glance at a few of the other open spaces around London will show how much they too are in danger of diminution, defacement, or even destruction. Take first Blackheath as a spot every one knows, and which being in good part royal property, and in close proximity to Greenwich Park, would be thought as safe as the park itself. Yet any one who has visited it lately must have been struck with the increasingly desolate appearance it presents. It is being built up to on all sides, but there does not seem to have been any actual encroachment on the heath itself-though the language of some of the witnesses before the Committee of '65 would bear that interpretation. The injury has rather been to the appearance of the heath, by enormous excava 66 tions made in search of gravel, the pitching of manure and dirt heaps, the erection of huts, stalls, piggeries, &c. One of the most recent gravel pits was stated to be 700 feet long and 70 broad, and Professor Airy described the pits as being dangerous as well as unsightlythey are worked in perpendicular holes, some of which come very near to the footpaths, and apparently, if that state of things goes on, there will soon be no safe footpaths across the heath." The heath becoming worse and worse, seeming, in fact, as a witness described it, to be in course of rapid destruction, the residents appointed a deputation consisting of Professor Airy, the Astronomer Royal, the Vicar of Greenwich, Admiral Hamilton, and other gentlemen whose standing might well give weight to their representations, to wait on the Commissioner of Woods and Forests in April, 1863, and call his attention to the state of the heath, with a view of providing a remedy-the primary object being to induce the board to withdraw its licence for the digging of gravel. An association formed for the improvement of Blackheath had some six years earlier addressed a letter to the commissioner to the same effect. To both the reply was virtually the same. "As far as we could ascertain," says Professor Airy, was no power, and also, I think, no inclination" to make the concession. It was exactly the old forest story: the Board is a department of revenue, and must make the most it can of the crown property. The commissioner replied to the letter of the association: "I do not think that I should be warranted in discontinuing the working of gravel in that pit, as a considerable revenue is annually derived by the Land Revenue of the crown from this source." Before the Committee of the House of Commons Mr. Gore was asked what was received from this source of revenue: he replied, "I think, upon an average, taking the last ten years, 567. a year"-less 27. 28. taken by the receiver. So that the country receives the considerable revenue of 537. 18s., for which the man who rents the pits is allowed to take as much gravel as he likes in the course of the year, and the beauty of the heath to be destroyed. there The northern rival of Blackheath-more than rival, for it is larger and more beautiful-Hampstead Heath, has suffered to quite as great an extent as Blackheath from excavations-here made for sand. The surface of the northern part of the heath is almost destroyed; heights have been levelled, trees undermined, and the gorse over a wide space extirpated. Here, however, no Board of Woods and Forests is in fault. The heath is the property of Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson; and the sand produces a rental of about 250%.—the person who digs the sand being allowed to take it from where he pleases, so that he does not exceed the quantity stipulated. But even a more serious danger than the disfigurement of the heath looms in the distance-its possible conversion into sites for building. Sir Thomas, as is well known, has made more than one unsuccessful application to parliament for powers to grant leases for 99 years for building upon parts of his estate contiguous to the heath, but not the heath itself. He now, however, distinctly states that he never would bind himself not to build on the heath; asserts his absolute right over it, and his intention to " see what I can do to turn the heath to account, and get what I can." And he explains what he " means by turning it to account." 66 might build an Agar Town there upon 21 years' lease." One may hope there is no danger of anything of the sort, but it is by no means certain. Sir Thomas believes he has the power to build on the heath without applying to Parliament. "Of course I can, by granting or by taking land forcibly; and then who is the party to oppose me in anything I may do? If I build where the sand is dug out who could interfere? There would be a great outcry of course. As to any right the public may have upon Hampstead Heath, "I conceive that they have none whatever, any more than they have upon my property at Charlton"-that property, of course, being inclosed and cultivated. The heath he considers private property, if wanted by the public to be paid for at the same rate as private land adjoining. But The Wimbledon people were put in a flutter last year by the appli→ cation to parliament of Earl Spencer for powers to inclose Wimbledon Common by a railing, and lay it out in an ornamental manner. it was not his lordship's intention to build over more than a small portion of the common; the main portion of it he would have dedicated to the public. The Wimbledonians were, however, quite right in opposing the bill. If it had been carried the common would have been converted into a sort of park, and restrictions put upon the hours of admission, &c. That sort of thing is not wanted at Wimbledon. Richmond Park is at no great distance; no other is required. Quite enough restraint has been put upon the use of the common by its employment for the volunteer practice and annual competition-and to say the whole truth, no little injury done to its appearance. That can be cheerfully borne on account of the excellence of the cause; but at the same time it becomes the more desirable that there should be no further meddling with it. Lord Spencer withdrew his bill in an excellent spirit, and it is to be hoped that an arrangement will be come to by which his proposition for the improvement of the common and its dedication to the public may be carried out. The condition of the neighbouring commons of Putney and Wandsworththe former of which has been fearfully skinned of its turf, and the latter almost destroyed-and of which Earl Spencer is lord of the manor, shows the necessity for coming to terms if possible. Fifteen or twenty years ago Wandsworth Common was as pleasant and rural a common as any near London. Then a bit of land was taken for a garden and a house, a railway cut through it, next a prison was built on it, a great workhouse, an orphan asylum, &c.; gravel was dug "in extraordinary quantities," excavations were made for railway ballast-until, as was stated to the committee, "Wandsworth Common is a morass now." A few years back there were public footpaths all over it, now there is but one, and that is scarcely passable in winter; in short "the common is now practically not useable by the public at all; it is full of pits and water. Clapham Common, on the other hand, is preserved in an admirable state; but that is owing to the resident gentry having_taken a lease of it from the lords of the manors of Clapham and Battersea, and drained and maintained at their own expense: when first taken "it was in a deplorable condition." Colonel Bowyer, the lord of Clapham |