Those who have inherited rights have indeed come to look on the Forest as in a sense their property. What is given or handed over to them is not in their {31} view their proper share: they take this openly, and get the balance the best way they can--in the dark generally. It is not dishonest to help yourself to what belongs to you; and they must live--must have their whack. They have, in fact, their own moral code, their New Forest conscience, just as other men--miners, labourers on the land, tradesmen, gamekeepers, members of the Stock Exchange, for instance--have each their corporate code and conscience. It may not be the general or the ideal or speculative conscience, but it is what may be called their working conscience. One proof that much goes on in the dark, or that much is winked at, is the paucity of all wild life which is worth any man's while to take in a district where pretty well everything is protected on paper. Game, furred and feathered, would not exist at all but for the private estates scattered through the Forest, in which game is preserved, and from which the depleted Forest lands are constantly being restocked. Again, in all this most favourable country no rare or beautiful species may be found: it would be safer for the hobby, the golden oriole, the hoopoe, the harrier, to nest in a metropolitan park than in the loneliest wood between the Avon and Southampton Water. To introduce any new species, from the biggest--the capercailzie and the great bustard--to the smallest quail, or any small passerine bird with a spot of brilliant colour on its plumage, would be impossible. The New Forest people are, in fact, just what circumstances have made them. Like all organised {32} beings, they are the creatures of, and subject to, the conditions they exist in; and they cannot be other than they are--namely, parasites on the Forest. And, what is more, they cannot be educated, or preached, or worried out of their ingrained parasitical habits and ways of thought. They have had centuries--long centuries--of practice to make them cunning, and the effect of more stringent regulations than those now in use would only be to polish and put a better edge on that weapon which Nature has given them to fight with. This being the conclusion, namely, that "things are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be," some of my readers, especially those in the New Forest, may ask, Why, then, say anything about it? why not follow the others who have written books and books and books about the New Forest, books big and books little, from Wise, his classic, and the Victoria History, down to the long row of little rosy guide-books? They saw nothing of all this; or if they saw un-pleasant things they thought it better to hold their tongues, or pens, than to make people uncomfortable.