Note 6 — Chapter II · ITS SCENERY.

For a justification of this general picture, I must refer the reader to the next chapter, where references to Domesday, as to the state of the district before its afforestation by the Conqueror, and the evidence supplied by the names of places, are given. I may add, as showing the former nature of the woods, that the charcoal found in the barrows, embankments, and the Roman potteries, is made from oak and beech, but principally the latter. Since, too, the deer have been destroyed, young shoots of holly are springing up in all directions, and another generation may, perhaps, see the Forest resembling its old condition. As a proof, beside the entry in Domesday, that the Hordle Cliffs were covered with timber, the fishermen dredging for the septaria in the Channel constantly drag up large boles of oaks, locally known as “mootes.” The existence of the chestnut is shown by the large beams in some of the old Forest churches, as at Fawley; but none now exist, except a few, comparatively modern, though very fine, at Boldrewood. Further, the Forest could never, except in the winter, have been very swampy, as the gravelly formation of the greater part of the soil supplies it with a natural drainage. Still, there were swamps, and in the wet places large quantities of bog-oak have been dug up, bearing witness, as in other countries, of an epoch of oaks, which preceded the beech-woods. Gough, in his additions to Camden’s Britannia, vol. i., p. 126, describes Godshill as being in his day covered with thick oaks. When, too, Lewis wrote in 1811, old people could then recollect it so densely covered with pollard oaks and hollies that the road was easily lost. (Historical Enquiries on the New Forest, p. 79, Foot-note.) No one, I suppose, now believes that wolves were extirpated by Edgar. They and wild boars are expressly mentioned in the Laws of Canute (Manwood: a Treatise of the Lawes of the Forest, f. 3, § 27, 1615), and lingered in the north of England till Henry VIII.’s reign. (See further on the subject, The Zoology of Ancient Europe, by Alfred Newton, p. 24.) I have hesitated, however, to include the beaver, though noticed by Harrison, who wrote in 1574, as in his time frequenting the Taf, in Wales (Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicle, ch. iv. pp. 225, 226.) The eggs of cranes, bustards, and bitterns, were, we know, protected as late as the middle of the sixteenth century. (Statutes of the Realm, vol. iii., p. 445, 25o Henry VIII., ch. xi., § 4; and vol. iv., p. 109, 3o, 4o, Ed. VI., ch. vii.) The last bustard was seen in the Forest, some twenty-five years ago, on Butt’s Plain, near Eyeworth. It is a sad pity that the enormous collection of birds’ bones, described as chiefly those of herons and bitterns, found by Brander amongst the foundations of the Priory Church at Christchurch (see Archæologia, vol. iv., pp. 117, 118), were not preserved, as they might have yielded some interesting results. We must, however, still bear in mind that there are far more points of resemblance than of difference between the Forest of to-day and that of the Conqueror’s time; especially in the long tracts of fern and heath and furze, which certainly then existed, pastured over by flocks of cattle.