abundance of fine oak and elm woods. In Buckinghamshire there is much
birch and oak, and also fine beech. Sussex, once celebrated for the
extent and quality of its oak forests, has yet some good timber; at
present its woodlands, including coppice-wood, occupy 175,000 acres.
Essex, with 50,000 acres of woodland, has some elms and oaks. Surrey,
Hertfordshire, and Derbyshire abound in coppice-woods. In Worcestershire
is abundance of oak and elm. In Oxfordshire there are the forests of
Wychwood and Stokenchurch, chiefly of beech, with some oak, ash, birch,
and aspen. Berkshire contains a part of Windsor forest; and
Gloucestershire, the Forest of Dean; so that these three last counties
are extensively wooded and with noble trees. Cheshire has few woods of
any extent, but the hedge-row timber and coppices are in such abundance
as to give the whole country, especially when seen from an elevation,
the appearance of a vast forest. Of the remaining counties some have
very little wood, and a few are altogether without it; but the want and
value of timber have given rise to a great many flourishing plantations.
In Wales particularly, there is a rage for planting. In South Wales
alone six millions of trees, it is said, are annually planted; if that
is the case, nine-tenths of the number must come to nothing, or the
whole country would be one entire forest.
_Scotland_ has few forests of large timber, if we except the woods of
Inverness-shire and Aberdeenshire. In the former of these counties the
natural pine-woods exceed the quantity of this wood growing naturally in
all the rest of Britain. In Strathspey alone, there are 15,000 acres of
natural firs; and in other parts, the woods are reckoned by miles, not
by acres; there are also oak woods and extensive tracts of birch. In
Aberdeenshire, in the higher divisions of Mar, there are 100 square
miles of wood and plantations. The pines of Braemar are magnificent in
size, and are of the finest quality. Argyleshire, Dumbartonshire, and
Stirlingshire have many thousands of acres of coppice-wood, and, with a
very few exceptions, the remaining counties have many, and some very
extensive plantations.
_Ireland_ has every appearance of having been once covered with wood,
but at the present day, timber is exceedingly scarce in that country,
there being no woods, if we except a portion along the sea-coast of
Wicklow, the borders of the Lake Gilly, in Sligo, some remains of an
ancient forest in Galway, and some small woods round Lough Lene, in the
county of Kerry. The lakes of Westmeath have also some wooded islands.
There are extensive plantations in Waterford, and a few natural woods,
of small extent, in Cavan and Down; but Fermanagh is the best-wooded
part of Ireland. The want of wood, however, in this country, as far as
it is employed for fuel, is little felt, in consequence of its extensive
bogs, which furnish an almost inexhaustible quantity of peat.
Upon the whole then, though Great Britain and Ireland do not now possess
any extensive forests, still there is a considerable quantity of timber,
and the extent of new plantations seems to promise that we shall never
be wholly destitute of so essential an article as wood. According to
M'Culloch, there is annually cut down in Great Britain and Ireland,
timber to the amount of £2,000,000.
* * * * *
In this country, even in the time of the Saxons, the forests or tracts,
more or less covered with wood, were generally public or crown lands, in
which the king was accustomed to take the diversion of hunting, and that
hunting from which all other persons were prohibited. This distinctly
appears from the laws of king Canute, enacted in 1016. But the
prohibition against hunting in these, was merely a protection thrown
around the property of the crown of the same kind with that afforded to
all other lauded estates, in regard to which, universally, the law was,
that every proprietor might hunt in his own woods or fields, but that no
other person might do so without his leave. On the establishment,
however, of the Norman government, it has generally been supposed that
the property of all the animals of chase throughout the kingdom was held
to be vested in the crown, and no person, without the express licence of
the crown, was allowed to hunt even upon his own estate. But this, after
all, is rather a conjecture; and, perhaps, all that we are absolutely
entitled to affirm, from the evidence we possess on the subject, is,
that after the Norman conquest the royal forests were guarded with much
greater strictness than before; that possibly in some cases their bounds
were enlarged; that trespasses upon them were punished with much greater
severity; and, finally, that there was established a new system of laws
and of courts for their administration.
In the language of the law, forests and chases differ from parks in not
being enclosed by walls or palings, but only encompassed by metes and
bounds; and a chase differs from a forest, both in being of much smaller
extent (so that there are some chases within forests) and in its
capability of being held by a subject, whereas a forest can only be in
the hands of the Crown. But the material distinction is, or rather was,
that forests alone were subject to the forest laws so long as they
subsisted. Every forest, however, was also a chase. A forest is defined
by Manwood, the great authority on the forest laws, as being "a certain
territory or circuit of woody grounds and pastures, known in its bounds,
and privileged, for the peaceable being and abiding of wild beasts, and
fowls of forest, chase, and warren, to be under the king's protection
for his princely delight; replenished with beasts of venery or chase,
and great coverts of vert for succour of the said beasts; for
preservation whereof there are particular laws, privileges, and officers
belonging thereunto." The beasts of park or chase, according to Coke,
are properly the buck, the doe, the fox, the marten, and the roe; but
the term, in a wider sense, comprehends all the beasts of the forest.
Beasts of warren are such as hares, conies, and roes; fowls of warren,
such as the partridge, quail, rail, pheasant, woodcock, mallard, heron,
&c.
The national woodlands of England, for many centuries, consisted of 49
forests, 13 chases, and 781 parks; some of them being of great extent,
as the New Forest in Hampshire, which still contains about 66,291 acres,
and extends over a district of 20 miles from north-east to south-west,
and about 15 miles from east to west. Recent parliamentary inquiry has
so fully established long-continued mismanagement, embezzlement of
timber, and encroachments upon the national forests and parks, that a
considerable portion of what remains will probably be shortly sold or
leased for general cultivation. The principal remaining national forests
and parks are:--
1. New Forest, Hampshire.
2. Dean Forest, Gloucestershire.
3. High Meadow Woods, do.
4. Alice Holt, Hampshire.
5. Woolmer Forest, do.
6. Parkhurst Forest, do.
7. Bere Forest, do.
8. Whittlebury Forest, Notts.
9. Salcey Forest, do.
10. Delamere Forest, Cheshire.
11. Wychwood Forest, Oxfordshire.
12. Waltham Forest, Essex.
13. Chopwell Woods, Durham.
14. The London Parks.
15. Greenwich Park.
16. Richmond Park.
17. Hampton and Bushy Parks.
18. Windsor Forest and Parks.
MISCELLANEOUS INDEX.
*_* The Names of the Trees described are given at page vii and viii.
PAGE
Alder timber valuable for piles; 45
Amazons, spears of the; 49
Aspen described; 204
Autumn, the Season of Landscape; 16
Bees, their fondness for the Linden flower; 136
Birch wine; 66
Blasted tree, its effect; 22
Bryony berries, ornamental, in their various stages; 23
Cadenham Oak; 172
Clump of trees; 25
Consecrated Yew-trees, ancient value of; 280
Copse, its use; 29
Cowper's Address to the Yardley Oak; 181
Cowthorpe Oak, near Wetherby; 180
Edlington; 9
Elm-tree, anciently considered as a funeral tree; 86
Ezekiel's (the Prophet) description of the Cedar-tree; 71
Forests and woodlands in the United Kingdom; 281
Gilpin, grave of the Rev. W. ----; 140
Glen, its character; 32
God's First Temples, Bryant's; 36
Gog and Magog; 181
Grove, its character; 33
Harefield Park in 1663, Silver Firs at; 218
Hawthorn, Queen Mary's; 94
Hern's Oak, Windsor Forest; 177
Holly-tree, supposed origin of the name; 107
---- Persian tradition and custom connected with the; 108
Honeysuckle, wild, its ornamental effect; 23
Hop, its effect when supported by a tree; 24
Hornbeam Maze, at Hampton Court; 110
Horse-chestnuts, finest at Bushy Park; 119
Inscription for the entrance into a wood, Bryant's; 40
Ivy on Trees; 22
Larch-tree, durability of its timber; 130
Leafing of Trees; 13
Leonard, Legend of St.; 60
Lightness a characteristic of beauty in Trees; 19
Lime-tree avenues; 133
Lover's Tablet, the; 56
Magdalen College, Oxford, founded near "the great Oak"; 168
Maple-tree crusca and mollusca; 142
---- the Sugar; 143
Mole, the; 42
Moss, its picturesque effect on the trunk of an aged Oak; 21
Motion, a source of picturesque beauty; 24
Mountain-Ash, Supersititions connected with the; 149
Mulberry-tree, Shakspeare's; 153
Norway Spruce Fir, the loftiest of European trees; 223
Nutting, pleasures of; 99
Oak-tree, the emblem of grandeur, strength, and duration; 158
Ornamental appendages to Trees; 22
Pine timber, character and value of; 215
Poplar dedicated to Hercules; 206
Pyramus and Thisbe, Fable of; 155
Queen Mary's Thorn; 94
Ravenna Pines at Hampstead, near London; 216
Reynolds, Tribute to Sir J; 133
Rufus, tradition respecting the place of his death; 170
Scotch Fir or Pine, durability of its timber; 215
Shire-Oak, near Worksop; 170
Swilcar Oak, in Needwood Forest; 179
Sycamore, Wordsworth's allusion to the; 229
Tamer, the finest Chestnut trees on the; 80
Traveller's joy ornamental; 23
Tree as a single object; 18
Venice Turpentine, how obtained; 127
Vernal Melody in the Forest; 15
Vine-clad branches of Trees; 23
Wallace's Oak; 176
Walnut tree, a miraculous; 238
Water-pipes, Elm; 89
Willow bark, a substitute for Jesuit's bark; 267
Woodlands and forests in the United Kingdom; 281
Yardley Oak; 180
Yew-tree, Wordsworth's description of a noted; 278
Zoroaster, the Holly and the disciples of; 108
GLASGOW:
W. G. BLACKIE AND CO., PRINTERS,
VILLAFIELD.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note
Although hyphenation was standardized, some words have both hyphaned and
seperate words (for example, "light-green" and "light green") which were
retained due to usage or being in qouatations. Non-standard formatting
of scientific names was not changed (example, both _Abies Larix_ and
Abies Larix appear). The Linnean system terminology was NOT standardized
with the exception of Monoec. as an abbreviation for the term monoecious.