Nothing, perhaps, illustrates more forcibly the difference between the conditions of modern life and those of the thirteenth or even the seventeenth century than our present attitude towards forests by comparison with that of our forefathers. When, in the time of Charles I, an attempt was made to declare the boundaries of the Forest of Waltham to be identical with those prescribed in the perambulation of Henry III, it was regarded as, and in fact it was, an outrage. It meant the effort to revive the harsh Forest Law and to expropriate private owners who had acquired rights by a prescription more than adequate from our modern standpoint. It meant a determination to extend the rights of the Crown, to deny the rights of the public. In the days of Edward VII all men rejoice over the patches of forest which have been preserved, all England congratulates itself when that which has been disafforested, as Hainault was in 1851, becomes forest again. This is because the meaning of words as applied to things is changed when the country passes from an unsettled to a settled state, just as, according to one of the Greeks, it is changed in revolutionary times. "Forest" in old times denoted a district and, in respect of that district, connoted a wicked restriction of public rights, or of rights which, to our mind, ought to have been public. "Forest" now means a district in which the public have abundant liberty, limited only by consideration for the rights of all, and the rights of the Crown in relation to it hardly come into account. Every remaining forest, whatsoever its governance may be, is a treasure-house for the naturalist, a sanctuary for wild birds and beasts, a place to be prized above measure since, in it, the dwellers in our congested islands may walk face to face with wild nature in pure air.