For it must be remembered that side by side with the movement for the enclosure of arable fields, there was going on a movement for the enclosure of wastes. From Appendix A. it will be seen that 577 Acts for enclosing wastes and common pastures were passed between 1702 and 1802, and over 800,000 acres were so added to the cultivated area of England and Wales. There were besides enclosures occasionally on a large scale by landed proprietors of wastes on which either common rights were not exercised, or on which they were too feebly maintained to necessitate an Act. The Board of Agriculture report for Notts records that 10,666 acres had recently been so enclosed from Sherwood Forest alone.[38] Lastly there was the continual pushing forward of cultivation by farmers, squatters, etc. It is impossible to do more than form a vague guess as to the quantity of land so enclosed, but reasons will be given later for the belief that it was far greater than the area of commons and waste enclosed by Act of Parliament. [38] Robert Lowe, “Nottingham,” Appendix. Now the opponents of enclosure of the sixteenth, seventeenth _and_ eighteenth centuries almost without exception opposed simply the enclosure of arable common fields; they usually expressly approve the enclosure of waste, as increasing the means of subsistence of the people. The advocates of enclosure on the other hand are equally concerned in advocating both kinds of enclosure. Hence we have statements to the effect that the enclosure of arable fields in the “champion” districts of England (_i.e._, the part much shaded on the map) caused rural depopulation, met by statistics and arguments to prove that all kinds of enclosure proceeding over all parts of England and Wales, on the whole, tended to increase population, urban and rural. Through looseness of wording on both sides, the controversialists seem to be contradicting one another; whereas, in reality, both might equally be right.