54 THE MANAGEMENT OF EPPING FOREST.
nature is repairing the injury, and already the spot is being covered with fine
mosses (in which nestle in due season some lovely Hepatica) and vast numbers of
seedling birches are springing up to renew the woodland for the delight of the
next generation.
Proceeding along the charming forest road, and at the "Wake Arms" turning
to the left down the old Loughton road to Broad Strood Lodge, the company
alighted at the entrance to Great Monk Wood, that exquisitely beautiful "bit" of
forest scenery, about the operations in which so much angry outcry has been
made. Here were a considerable number of tree-trunks, which had been brought
to the spot from various parts of the wood for convenience of removal.
Sensational pictures had been published of these "fallen monarchs of the wood,"
apparently under the idea that they had grown and had been felled where they
lay ! Here Mr. Buxton mounted on a trunk as a rostrum, and directed the
special attention of the meeting to the nature of Monk Wood. He said that it was
a mistake to suppose that it was a piece of virgin forest. It did not differ in
essentials from any other part of the woodlands which had been pollarded. The
bulk of the trees had in effect been pollarded up to fifty years ago, and he was
told by Mr. Maitland that the wood was formerly divided into ten sections, each
of which was pollarded in succession, one leading branch being left on each tree,
a necessary practice in dealing thus with beeches. This process was an ex-
tremely unlikely one to produce picturesque trees, and in effect it was only those
trees which had been distinctly left untouched which could be so described. In
addition to these there were many fine unpollarded trees, and others which were
extremely tall and drawn up from overcrowding—thin, almost branchless, in-
fested with a blight (allied apparently to the American blight), diseased, and a
source of disease. It was these last and a portion of the ugliest of the pollards
which had been removed, but only when they were actually doing damage to
superior trees. He asked them to remember that it was extremely difficult for
any two experts to agree as to the particular trees which should be removed, and
he begged them not therefore to criticise individual cases but to consider (1st)
whether any should have been removed at all, and (2ndly) whether on the whole
the selection had been judiciously made. He called attention to the extreme
importance of the question, How will the Forest renew itself? Of this there were
good illustrations in Monk Wood. Where old openings existed they would see
young groves, here of beeches, there of thorns, and outside the wood of birches.
These young growths were of extreme charm in themselves and of immense
importance in the economy of the Forest. Mr. Buxton then called attention to
that section of the Forest (an example of which they would soon visit) which
consisted only of small pollard trees, very thickly grown together, and contended
that, in his opinion, the only way to deal with such a tract was to open irregular
patches, removing several stems together. It would be found that in such patches
after a time, the heather appears, and this or thorn bushes act as nurses and pro-
tectors for young forest trees. Finally he asked them not only to use their eyes
but their imaginations. There had been too much imagination imported into
this controversy, but that was not what he meant. He meant that they should
not only see the picture before them but imagine what it would be fifty years
hence. To view a wood immediately after it has been thinned was to do some-
thing less than justice to the Forest.
In Monk Wood, a very careful examination was made of the parts of the
Forest where thinning had been practised, and contrasting them with a few tracts
where little or nothing had been done since the place came under the care of