the whole of it is covered with sand, or capped with a thick bed of drift, with a surface-soil only a few inches deep, capable of naturally bearing little, except in a few places, besides heath and furze. On a geological map we can pretty accurately trace the limits of the Forest by the formation. Of course, in so large a space, there will be some spots, and some valleys, where the streams have left a richer glebe and a deeper tilth.[1]
But the Chroniclers, by their very exaggeration, have defeated their own purpose. There is in their narration an inconsistency, which, as we dwell upon it, becomes more apparent. We would simply ask, where are the ruins of any of the thirty or fifty churches, and the towns of the people who
- ↑ In support of these statements, I may quote from the Prize Essay on the Farming of Hampshire, published in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England (vol. xxii., part ii., No. 48, 1861), and which was certainly not written with any view to historical evidence, but simply from an agricultural point. At pp. 242, 243, the author says: "The outlying New Forest block consists of more recent and unprofitable deposits. This tract appears to the ordinary observer, at first sight, to be a mixed mass of clays, marls, sands, and gravels. The apparent confusion arises from the variety of the strata, from the confined space in which they are deposited, and from the manner in which, on the numerous hills and knolls, they overlie one another, or are concealed by drift gravel." And again, at pp. 250, 251, he continues: "Of the Burley Walk, the part to the west of Burley Beacon, and round it, is nothing but sand or clay, growing rushes, with here and there some 'bed furze.' . . . . The Upper Bagshots, about Burley Beacon, round by Rhinefield and Denney Lodges, and so on towards Fawley, are hungry sands devoid of staple:" and finally sums up by saying, "half of the 63,000 acres are not worth 1s. 6d. an acre," p. 330.
nitebat uberrime." (Thorpe's edition, as before quoted.) Were this, even in a limited degree, true, the Forest would present the strange anomaly of possessing more churches then than it does now, with a great increase of population. The Domesday census, we may add, makes the inhabitants of that portion which is called "In Novâ Forestâ et circa eam," a little over two hundred. See Ellis's Introduction to Domesday, vol. ii. p. 450.
