THE CHARACTER OF ENGLISH WOODS.
ALEADING land agent, discussing the Continental and Englishideals of woodlands, drew a marked distinction between the commercial forestry of France and Germany and the " estate woods " of our own country. The difference must have struck the practical mind of the German Emperor when shooting at Sandringham and at Lowther. The woods on both estates are very different, though the latter do not in any way partake of the " dark and funereal verdure of the North " which formed the environment of many of the cam• paigns of the contestants for supremacy in the early days of the Russian and Swedish Kingdoms. The Thirty Years' War left Germany so poor that in the absence of coal the landed proprie- tors welcomed with increasing pleasure any suggestions which would yield a revenue from charcoal, hark, and later from timber trees. They early learned the value of long straight sticks of hardwood timber, and schools of forestry grew up to teach the value of getting the utmost from the acre of ground by plant- ing thickets of fir or mixed trees, which would grow to the maximum height with the minimum of waste ground and non-commercial lateral branches.
Our English soil was richer. The early discovery of coal soon replaced the fuel demand. The old Norman privilege of getting firewood " by hook or by crook," which meant the liberty to pull dead boughs and branches from the trees, became gradually a concession allowed only to the poor. Yet in the pine-woods of Claremont behind Esher, only some twenty miles from London, the cracking of the dead branches may be heard any Saturday, when the local children, by an extension of the ancient privilege, are busy throwing up billets tied to ropes over the dead boughs and hauling them down to take home for fuel. The making of charcoal and smelting of iron by wood fuel has been a vanished industry since the Sussex ironworks made their last contribu- tion to British art-work in the form of the railings of St, Paul's Cathedral. Our English woods after the reign of Elizabeth were probably not very different from those of to-day. The natural forest existed, and still exists, mainly on the old Crown lands. But there are woods which have been woods since Domesday Book was written, which have been regularly cut., replanted, and used for undergrowth felling, and by immemorial use and tradition have never much altered. They are as much part of old England as our cornfields; older, perhaps, than some of our hedges ; and show such "excellent differences," such a consistent character in themselves, and such pleasing contrasts, that we may well be proud of them. There is also a personal aspect in winch
they present themselves. Though our forbears did not plant as an investment, the woods always represented a last asset of the landed proprietor. Where they were not felled, it may be taken that the owners always regarded them as a form of legacy to posterity, and the woods represented voluntary savings. They did not plant to cut until in the fulness of time the timber was necessarily ready for the axe in another generation. When the time came the owner replanted or let the young trees grow, for which under our old system open space was needful, and so the woods have remained woodland in saecula saeculorum.
Men who plant new woods try to reproduce the old where they can. Where they cannot, they turn to modern instruc- tion. Larch, which is a new tree, has given us the larch plantations, early leafing and beautiful, quick growing and quickly felled. Another and more ancient commercial tree is the beech, which has given us the beech-woods of the chalk counties, and more especially of Buckinghamshire. In an admirable legal decision the whole story of the commercial as opposed to the ancient ornamental value of woods was set out in the case of the Dashwood estates. The Judges distin- guished between temporary woods and estate woods, giving permission to cut the beech-woods early. Woods as generally understood were only a limited property of the tenant for life. The "lady "—it was a lady of the manor who was seeking permission to fell the timber—could use estate woods for the enjoyment of the shade. She was at liberty to depasture her swine under them, but not to fell them, unless to accumu- late the price as part of the trust for the tenants in tail. But the beech-woods of Buckinghamshire are only a crop. They are cut at short intervals for particular uses,—the making of chairs and the woodwork of mill-sluices and water- sluices. Hence they are not permanent " timber," but only a form of underwood.
No species of landed property is more carefully guarded for personal enjoyment than are woods. Yet there are few which have not paths through them, many are open to the public under certain restrictions, and all contribute to the common enjoyment of landscape. Those who scan them closely, especially in the late autumn, when cover-shooting is general, note their singular beauty, and the classes under which they may be grouped. They conform strictly to the soil, trees and undergrowth alike being determined by this natural condi- tion. The clay which grows corn grows oaks. All the heavy Midlands, the clay lands of Suffolk and Essex, and the heavy Mains, which mean sand upon clay, with more clay than sand, bear oak-woods, seen at their best on the mixed soil, and in their least attractive form in the wealds of Kent and Sussex. At their worst these oak-woods have only blackthorn, briars, and nettles at bottom. Where the loam predominates there is found elder, dogwood, wild guelder rose, and the more lately planted barberry. Hazel is the main underwood both on clay and on this lighter ground, and among it grows the beautiful spindlewood. When the felling is some two years old the spindlewood clumps bear clusters of rose-pink wax-like berries which shine like masses of flowers in the November sun.
In the "medium woods" of Sussex, Surrey, Kent, and parts of Berkshire and Hampshire, which last county has a vast area of estate woodlands not included in the New Forest, the main undergrowth is hazel, covered below in spring by our native woodland flowers. In spring also the odour of wild hyacinth spreads down the gale, the wood anemone whitens the ground. Recent planting has added to these woods the sweet chestnut, used as quick-growing underwood, which covers the ground in autumn with its pale-golden leaves. Bracken fern, one of the greatest ornaments of woods, grows on the mixed soils wherever light and air penetrate between the trees ; "six-foot fern " is not a poetical exaggeration. In Sherwood Forest it would still cover Robin Hood's tallest men standing upright. In the North the "coal measures" own a special growth of wood. It is all tall wych elm. The thin upstanding trees give little shade, and mainly leave briars below, excellent cover for game, but not beautiful. Chalk, which southwards mainly grows the beech, seems anciently to have produced the yew, the thorn, and the box. The natural growth of box, juniper, yew, and thorn survives on the Surrey Downa near Guildford, in Berkshire, and in North Hampshire. But on the borders of Sherwood
Forest :nixed woods of yew grow as freely as on the chalk slopes r : Cliveden above the Thames, and at least one manor was held by the service of providing bows for the King. The beech and pine woods kill the undergrowth, and so keep the ground clear in vistas, a beautiful thing to the eye, even if the sportsman likes it not; hence to improve the beauty of a mixed wood beeches and pines are a necessary addition, and should be planted in clumps, for alone they do not make a clearing beneath them. The two extremities of Western England, Cornwall and Cumberland, have woods almost peculiar to themselves, the former of scrubby oak, growing entirely in the valleys, the latter of mixed sycamore and mountain ash, natural woods in the river gorges and by the beck sides, self-sown, and always reproducing their kind in the clefts of rocks and braes.
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