THE BARCLAY-JOHNSTON MSS. 157
Major Lamorock Flower of the work of the Lee Conservancy, or
those of the able Engineer of the East London Water Company of
the arrangements at Lea Bridge. It were well if some of those who
undertake to enlighten the public on the subject of water supply
would learn for themselves how much skill and thought has been
given to the subject.
And now I must make an end to this very brief and imperfect
sketch of a very wide and important subject, one upon which I
have no right and no wish to dogmatise. I would, however, venture
to express a very strong opinion that in the water supply of the Lea
Valley we have a natural provision of the greatest value which ought
never to be overlooked when ambitious and costly schemes for pro-
viding for the needs of the metropolis and its surroundings are
discussed.
THE BARCLAY-JOHNSTON MSS. AND PAPERS
RELATING TO EPPING FOREST.
Now in the Library of the Essex Field Club.
By W. C. WALLER, M.A., F.S.A. (Hon. Treasurer).
[Read June 27th, 1896.]
IN the late spring of 1895 I, as one of the two Hon. Librarians,
received from the Hon. Secretary of the Club a box containing
an undigested mass of pamphlets, papers, and books, in manuscript
and in print, relating in the main to Epping Forest, which had been
sent to him by Mr. Andrew Johnston and the executors of the late
Mr. Henry Ford Barclay, of Monkhams. Mr. Barclay, it will be
remembered, was a member—and for a time, I think, Chairman—of
the Commissioners appointed by the Epping Forest Act, 1871,
which sat from 1872 to 1877, and received the evidence subse-
quently printed in four great volumes of a thousand pages each—
volumes which, though unfortunately not included in the present
collection, are, it may be said in passing, always accessible in the
Guildhall Library of the Corporation of London. Mr. Johnston,
whose interest in forestal matters was great, became a Verderer under
the Epping Forest Act of 1878 ; and it is to his antiquarian instinct
that we owe the preservation of many papers, the value and interest
of which will increase with each passing decade.