108 THE COMING OF AGE OF
the Club and that our fighting forces will be always found ready
to take the field should any similar dangers threaten the Forest
in the future.
More in harmony with the work of a Society such as ours is
legitimate criticism, discussion and advising in connection with
the management of the Forest in so far as forest management is
a question of applied science. Very early in the history of the
Club we had occasion to take alarm at certain indications of
policy with respect to the management, and a discussion was
held at a meeting in February, 1882, when the general question
of the management of the Forest and the necessary measures for
the protection of its animals and plants were considered by many
experts, the Verderers being represented on that occasion by
Mr. Andrew Johnston (Proc. III., Appendix No. I., pp. ix. et seq.).
A conference with Mr. E. N. Buxton and his brother Verderers
was subsequently held in June, 1882, at Knighton (Ibid. III.,
xxviii.) The full report of the discussion and the papers com-
municated at the meeting in February, together with the
opinions of experts and the statement prepared in connection
with our opposition to the railway scheme of 1883 were all
brought together as a contribution to the general subject of the
Forest management in an Appendix (No. I.) to the third volume
of our Proceedings. That Appendix contains an Editorial
introduction giving an excellent historical summary of the state
of affairs down to that period and papers by Dr. M. C. Cooke,
Prof. Boulger, Mr. Harting, Mr. Burrows and myself.
A few years later, in 1889, the management of the Forest
formed the subject of a series of virulent attacks in certain
newspapers. Without committing the Club collectively to any
action in connection with this anonymous and irresponsible
agitation, a meeting was held in April of that year in order to
inspect the portions which had undergone thinning, and a dis-
cussion took place, in the course of which Prof. Boulger made
some valuable criticisms and suggestions concerning certain
details of the operations of which ths results had been inspected.
No formal action of the Club was considered necessary on that
occasion, and the general policy of gradually removing the old
pollards and allowing them to be replaced by young trees
was in no way opposed (Essex Naturalist III., 164). In
1894 the thinning operations again drew forth newspaper