THE MANAGEMENT OF EPPING FOREST.
59
larly mention Lord's Bushes, which you have seen to-day, because this has been
thinned out four times within a period of fourteen years. And I select this also
in order to bring out and to emphasize the fact that I am only speaking as an
individual member, because one of the correspondents in "The Times," a member of
our Club, appeals to this very district as "a frightful example of injudicious and
unnecessary clearing." He bases his criticism on an expression of opinion by the
editor of "The Gardener's Magazine" ("City Press," Feb. 28th.) I cannot imagine
that the editor of that magazine ever knew Lord's Bushes as I knew it twenty
years ago. You have been through it to-day, and there are no doubt many
residents here who have known it as long as or even longer than I. I hope we
shall have the benefit of their candid experience ; in legal phraseology "without
prejudice."
In expressing general concurrence with the doings of the Conservators, I have
no intention of leading you to suppose that no mistakes have been made or that
I am prepared to endorse every detail for which they are responsible. But after
perusing the correspondence, and after consulting with some of their critics, I am
fully persuaded of one thing, and that is that very much has recently been laid
on their shoulders for which they are in no way accountable. The paper warfare
has been conducted in a manner not altogether fair to that body. I think that
some hasty correspondents have attributed to wilful clearing the necessary re-
moval of burnt underwood resulting from accidental or malicious firing. I am
equally of opinion that the charge of widening straight rides which are already
too wide is based on a hasty examination of the cleared bays or recesses which
have been made with the very object of breaking up the unsightly regularity of
these straight rides, which were in existence before the present management.
But in admitting that mistakes may have been made I contend that they have
been, on the whole, unimportant. And after all we have to do with a body of
mortals. If they could have managed an area of nearly 6,000 acres (over which
cattle are allowed to graze), comprising heaths and bogs, dense groves of stunted
pollards which have been hacked about for centuries, gravel expanses which have
been scarred by pits, large tracts of cultivated land, which have been rescued for
the public,—if they could have dealt with this stretch of country in the course of
some fourteen years so as to make it "natural" and give satisfaction to every-
body, then indeed would the Conservators have established a claim to be ranked
with the Immortals.
Eleven years ago, when little or nothing had been done but the artificialising
of certain parts of the Forest, when little or no attempt had been made at restor-
ing natural conditions, and when, to crown all, a railway scheme was projected,
we naturally took alarm (Proc. E.F.C, vol. iii., appendix L, p. xxviii.). It was
but reasonable to look upon these straws as indicating the direction of the wind
It was then that I made certain statements, which an anonymous correspondent
in "The Times" (April 2nd) has done me the honour of quoting as a horrid
example of inconsistency. But this critic has conducted the polemic by political
rather than by scientific methods. He adopts the very stale stratagem of selecting
one or two passages from the paper read in 1883, and confronting them with
opinions expressed in connection with the present agitation. He does not inform
the public when the said statements were made, neither does he inform them that
they had reference to the destruction consequent upon the introduction of a rail-
way with all its concomitants. And he does not do the Conservators the justice
of admitting that the "rowdyism" which I then complained of, has been largely
suppressed, and in one part of the Forest (opposite the "Rising Sun" Inn) alto-