THE AREA OF EPPING FOREST FOR FAUNISTIC PURPOSES. 11
in parts which have been partially or wholly cleared of trees, or may
even re-appear when the tracts are replanted. This may be seen in
parts of the cleared tracts of land formerly constituting Hainault
Forest. What area, then, should we consider as being Epping Forest
for our purposes? There is no very natural district which can be so
defined. A very large portion of Essex was formerly actually covered
with trees, and even in historical times the limits of the legal
"Forest of the Lord the King" were very wide indeed; in 1292,
its metes and bounds in Essex extended "from the bridge at
Stratford unto the bridge of Cattywad [over the Stour] in length,
and in breadth from the Thames unto the King's highway which is
called Stanstrete" [the road from Bishops' Stortford to Colchester].
But such extensive claims represented the views of a race of Norman
kings who "loved the deer as though they were brothers," and killed
them off almost as jovially. We naturalists must be satisfied
with more modest domains. Several successive ordinances have
restricted the area of the legal "Forest of Essex," and have brought
its bounds more nearly conterminous with the remains of the ancient
woodlands which we know as Epping or Waltham Forest. We
therefore propose, in the absence of a better basis of delimitation, to
define Epping Forest for faunistic purposes as the area embraced in
the last perambulation, that of 17th Charles I. (1641). The tract
of land so defined is fairly natural, being the district between the Lea
and the Stort on the west, and the Roding on the east, and bounded by
the road from Stratford to Romford on the south. The northern
margin is less easily traced. It should always be remembered
that it by no means follows that the included district was all wood-
land, only that the district was "forest" in a legal sense, and there-
fore subject to forest laws and customs. Within these boundaries
were, of course, many villages, farm lands, and private grounds and
woods. The lines of the Perambulation of 1641 embraced about
60,000 acres, of which about 10,000 acres were open waste, and of
this 4,000 acres belonged to Hainault Forest (with which we have
nothing to do at present), leaving about 6,000 acres as the waste of
Epping Forest. And remembering, as we have before pointed out
(see "Journal of Proceedings, Essex Field Club," vol. iv., p. cui.),
that Epping Forest at present consists of about 5,575 acres, its area
since Charles the First's time has manifestly not greatly diminished.
With these facts in view it is time that the disagreeable word
"remnant" should cease to be applied to our forest.