80 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
There is evidence in local and county floras that the birch
was not a common tree in the Forest during the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and for at least three-quarters of the nineteenth
centuries, although it grew in the sixteenth century in sufficient
quantity to make it profitable for felling with other trees. The
late W. C. Waller, in "Monk Wood in Loughton; a Frag-
ment of Forest History,"6 quotes the following verdict given
in relation to Forest woodland in 1582. "We say that there
is a wood uppon the waste soyle of the said mannor called
Muncke Wood, containing as it is measured fifty-three acres,
sixty five poles at twenty-one foote to the pole: whereof there
is waste ground in the same that beareth no wood by estimacion
fifteen acres; which said wood hath been sold to Mr. Wroth,
who felled the same. The nature and kind of the woodd so felled
was most oke, beach, homebeame, and birch."
The waste acreage still exists, the ground is swampy and
covered with the grass Molinia caerulea. There is evidence of
pan in this area as there is in that treeless portion south of the
keeper's cottage already mentioned.
Warner, in his Plantae Woodfordienses, 1771, writes respecting
the genus Betula, "Found on the Forest between High Beach
and Golden Hill in the parish of Loughton, in general not very
common." Specimens of birch in the Edward Forster herba-
rium, now incorporated in that of the British Museum, were
collected, not in open spaces within the Forest, but on the edge
of the woodland. The specimens are labelled, one Hale End
1794, and another Theydon Mount. The former station is on
the southern boundary, the latter is to the north-east, quite outside
the limits of the Forest as determined by the Perambulation
of the 17th Charles 1st (1641). Birch was recorded on the
same authority from Coopersale and Park Hall, on the north-
eastern boundary. At Theydon it was growing plentifully.
Gibson's Flora of Essex (1862), gives Betula, white birch, re-
corded from Stratford, in botanical district IV., fide J. Freeman,
and near Epping, H. Doubleday, in addition to Edward Forster's
localities.
On the western side of the Forest, in the counties of Middlesex
and Hertfordshire, the birch was not plentiful. Trimen, Flora
of Middlesex (1869), states "Betula alba rather rare"; no records
6 Essex Naturalist, v. 1891, p. 174.