The new fashion of excessive game-preserving, which is practised on the manors though not in the Forest itself, is answerable for the destruction of much wild life. The keepers wage war on jay and magpie, owl and hawk, and even the little harmless squirrel has been so diminished in the last year or two, that you may take many a long ramble through the woods and never once hear his chatter or watch his nimble spring from tree to tree. A powerful plea for a sanctuary comes from the pen of E. W., the writer of a series of delightful articles on "Out of Doors," in the _Hampshire Chronicle_. After deploring the utter extinction of many bird species and increasing rarity of others, she goes on: "What we want is a sanctuary, and a sanctuary of great extent near the South Coast; the New Forest is ready to our hand and requires no making--wood and water, sea and moor, all are there. We also need, when we have got our ideal sanctuary, an army of keepers who shall be as anxious to keep alive, as the keepers of the present time are anxious to kill." But the worst enemy of the Forest is its admirer. He comes, falls in love with it, craves a house within its borders, praises it to his friends, and invites them down. So the fashion comes, and the fashion creates a demand. Land rises to a fancy value, and when times are so hard for the landowners, what can they do but relinquish their fairest sites to the speculative builder? If this goes on, our descendants may wonder why we cared so much for an endless firwood, diversified with "artistic" villas--or perhaps they will like it. In the country that lies East of the Sun and West of the Moon they would doubtless pass a law that all manors within the Forest, coming into the market, should be resumed by the Crown and enclosed as wood or waste for ever. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN _At the Villafield Press, Glasgow, Scotland_ Transcriber's Note: Words in italics are enclosed by underscores, _thus_. Inconsistent punctuation at the end of quotations was not changed. Changes made from the original: Added a description to the illustration on the title page, and capitalized 'purlieu': ... 'from Cadnam through Dibden Purlieu' ... End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The New Forest, by Elizabeth Godfrey