A BURNT FOREST.
AMONGST the Forests which met their doom in the rage for inclosure and improvement which possessed reformers some thirty years ago, was the Forest of Woolmer, in Hamp- shire. Parliament was not then in a mood to listen to any but the narrowest considerations of economy on such a subject, and it would have been vain to appeal to the memory of Gilbert White in behalf of the forest which be knew so well, or to quote his shrewd observation that " such forests and wastes are of considerable service to neighbourhoods that verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat and turf for their firing, with fuel for the 'burning their lime, and with ashes for their grasses,
and by maintaining their geese and their stock of young cattle at little or no expense." The fiat had gone forth that Forests were to be made profitable to the State, and nothing Would serve but that the Queen's seignory over this wild tract of land should be turned into the ownership of a large inclosure. Happily, however, it was not thought necessary to convert the Commoners' property in like manner. When the Crown was satisfied, they were left to do what they liked with the residue. Partly for this reason, and partly because much of the land allotted to the Crown was not worth the expense of -inclosure, a large tract of the ancient Forest still remains in as primitive a condition as in the days when it afforded the Vicar of Sel- borne " much entertainment, both as a sportsman and as a natu- ralist." True, some of the Forest Ponds have been drained, and of the three thousand acres allotted to the Crown, large areas have been inclosed and planted with monotonous Scotch fir. But out- side these inclosures, as in the last century, there is nothing but sand, heath, and fern. Except where young, self-sown firs are spreading near the fences, there is still " not one stand- ing tree in the whole extent." And yet the effect is un- deniably impressive. A sense of wild freedom and loneliness is produced by the expanse of stunted heather, skirted by gloomy firs, and rising, in one direction, into a curious camel-backed ridge, tufted at the extremities with scrag- giest, thinnest-foliaged pines. Like the other sand-bills in the neighbourhood, this forest ridge, Weaver's Down, falls abruptly on one side with a tolerably even face ; while on the other it breaks up into shoulders of sand, running back at right angles to the summit line, and sloping down gradually to the more level ground, with interspersed hollows and bottoms. Although Weaver's Down is of no great height, 500 or 600 feet, it commands a very delightful view. To the south, are the Downs, broadening out on the west into the chalk district of Hants and Wilts, with Nore Hill, over Selborne, in the fore- ground. To the east, are the wooded hills and fields of Sussex, and to the north the long slope of Hindhead. It is probably due to the isolation of the ridge that the wind is felt so keenly ; but certainly there is on Weaver's Down a sense of exposure which is not felt on either of the much higher neighbouring hills of Blackdown and Hindhead, and the severity of the wind, in fact, is attested by the ragged and ghost-like appearance of the few firs which survive in the planted clumps. Immediately beneath the hill, to give anima- tion to the somewhat severe landscape, is a considerable sheet of water, and some warmth of foliage of oak and birch.
Early in the last century, there were large herds of red deer in Woolmer Forest, and it is said that no less than five hundred head were on one occasion driven before Queen Anne, who diverged from the Portsmouth Road at Liphook to see the sight. The deer were subsequently unconscionably poached by a notorious gang, known as the " Waltham Blacks ;" and at length, to check the wholesale demoralisation of the neighbour- hood, the few remaining were caught alive, and conveyed to Windsor. There is little life to be seen in the Forest now. A few cattle crop the heather, and perhaps the wild- looking inmate of one of the few cottages in the Forest may be encountered, while the " chip " of the hatchet is heard from one of the plantations. But stillness and loneliness are the prevailing characteristics of the scene.
The sombre aspect of the Forest is, no doubt, heightened by a peculiarity which might well be dispensed with. Nearly the whole of the open waste has been burned within recent years, and is in various stages of recovery. Large parts are absolutely black, the only vegetation consisting of pin-points of young heather piercing the scorched surface at intervals of two or three inches ; on other tracts, where the fires are of older date, a scant, short covering of heath is spreading, dotted here and there with whitened furze-stalks. Scarcely anywhere does furze, heather, or bracken attain to the height or thickness which, even in this hungry soil, would be natural to it. Such a condition seems to be not altogether novel in the Forest. "About March or April," says Gilbert White, "such vast heath fires are lighted up, that they often get to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes been communi- cated to the nnderwoods, woods, and coppices, when great damage has ensued." In his day, the fires seem to have been lighted intentionally, the excuse being that when the old heather was burned, young sprouted up, which afforded tender browse for cattle. Unfortunately, the fire sometimes struck so deep that it destroyed all vegetation, so that (to quote again) "for hundreds of acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desola- tion, the whole circuit round looking like the cinders of a volcano." No language could more accurately describe the state of a vast tract of the forest last year, and at the present time it need be but little qualified. Even to the destruction of private property, history has repeated itself, for in 1880 considerable damage was done to the enclosures of a Mr. Cardew ; while in the great fire of last year, injury to the extent of thousands of pounds was inflicted upon the property of another neighbour. ing landowner;the Rev. William Smith.
In the last century, the fires seem to have been the work of the Commoners, wishing to improve their herbage. At the present day, some at least have been due to the Crown officials. The pretext is that it is necessary to clear the surface for the pur- pose of camping. But troops very seldom camp in the Forest, while, on the other hand, pheasants are reared in the Crown plantations for the Game Preserving Association at Aldershot, -and a belt of burned land is often a great safeguard against the straying of these costly birds. It is not surprising, then, that neighbouring proprietors should have come to the conclusion that their property was being put in jeopardy in the interests -of sport, and that they should have appealed first, to the Govern- ment, and then to the House of Commons, for protection. At the fag-end of the summer sittings, Mr. Sclater-Booth was enabled to raise a discussion on the subject in the House ; and though the assurances of the War Office were somewhat vague, the measures which have been taken and the publicity given to the question may, it is to be hoped, at least for a time, check the recklessness which has recently marked the conduct of the -officials in charge of the Forest.
For the facts, as disclosed by the published Parliamentary papers, are sufficiently startling. " During the last three years," says Mr. Smith, the principal sufferer by the fire of last year, three very considerable and many lesser fires have taken place in the Forest." The first extensive fire, in 1878, was stopped before it reached private property by the exertions, in great part, of private persons. The authorship of this fire was denied by the Government Keepers. The second, in 1880, which damaged Mr. Cardew's property, was at -first repudiated by the Forest Warders, but was afterwards admitted to have been their work, and to have got beyond their -control. The third and most extensive, in May, 1881, is alleged by the Warders to have been the work of an incendiary ; and their view has been accepted by a Military Court of Inquiry, so that Mr. Smith, whose plantations were totally destroyed, and whose house and stables would, but for the small garden sur- rounding them, have been burnt also, is denied all compensa- tion. This fire extended in all over about 670 acres, 300 consist- ing of Crown plantations. It broke out on Sunday, May 22nd, and was not finally extinguished till the 30th, occupying a detachment of men from Aldershot, under the command of an Engineer officer, a whole week. One peculiarity of the fire was that it appeared in its inception to be the natural sequel of some smaller fires, which were admittedly lit by the Govern- ment officials some two months earlier, and one of which was stated by the Chief Warder to have had for its object the im- provement and preservation of the game, as well as the clearance of the surface for military purposes. These earlier fires cleared 'the rough covert between two of the Crown plantations, and the large fire commenced in the covert edging one of these planta- tions on another side. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Mr. Smith should not be entirely convinced as to the incendiary nature of the fire to which he fell a victim. But, admitting the conolusion of the War Office to be the cor- rect one, it is obvious that, when so dangerous an agent as fire is freely employed by those who are charged with the management of an extensive tract of open land, and that with a view, if not solely, at least among other objects, to the raising of game, it is not unlikely to be employed by the uneducated inhabitants of a wild region for other purposes, which, to them, would seem quite as justifi- able. The difference between the exercise of a legal right and incendiarism becomes in such a case rather a fine one, and one which would certainly not come home to the rustic mind. 'The public generally will, on this subject, be disposed to sympa- thise with the view of the Lord Chancellor, himself a near neigh- bour of the Forest, and by no means free from danger, that "there .ought to be a stringent law making those who do these things (whomsoever they may serve) criminally responsible, when they are done was to injure the property of those who have not author.
ised them, either from the omission of the precautions necessary to prevent their. spreading (when such precautions, if properly taken, would be sufficient), or from doing the thing at all, in any places or in any circumstances in which such precautions cannot be effectually taken." The War Office have, to some extent, admitted the propriety of this view and the seriousness of the case, by making rules for the future management of the Forest. It is to be intrusted to the care of an officer of Engineers, specially detailed for the purpose ; broad rides are to be cut round the edges ; whenever fires are lighted, the officer of Engineers in charge is to be present, with a sufficient force to keep the fire under control, and all owners of property in the neighbourhood are to receive adequate previous notice. Possibly, under the operation of these rules, the Forest may gradually recover its natural state, but it would have been more satis- factory to know also that fires would not henceforward be lighted at all with any reference to the interests of game- preserving. In any case, it will be some years before the singular air of desolation which the district now wears will have alto- gether disappeared.
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