NEW FOREST, the name of a district in Hampshire (q.v.), triangular in shape, and bounded on the w. by the river Avon, on the s, by the coast, and on the n.e. by a line running from the borders of Wiltshire along the Southampton water. Area about 64,000 acres. This triangle appears to have been a great wooded district from the earli est times, and its present name dates from the Norman conquest, when it was regularly afforested. Since that period it has remained a possession of the crown, subject to rights of " pannage," vert (greenwood), and turf-cutting, claimed by various estates in or near the forest. During the " pannage" month, which commences at the end of September, and lasts for six weeks, the borderers drive in herds of swine to feed on the mast in the forest, and this right they obtain by paying a small annual fee in the Stewarts court at Lyndhurst, which is considered the capital of the forest. Formerly this dis trict was the haunt of numerous "squatters," but their huts are now rarely to be seen.
Gipsies, however, still congregate here in considerable numbers. In 1854 a commission was appointed to examine the extent and nature cf the rights of pannage, etc., claimed the foresters and borderers, and in a large majority of cases the claims were confirmed. '1 lie principal trees in the forest are the oak and beech, with large patches of body as underwood. The oaks have been much used as timber for the British navy. Tracts of exquisite woodland scenery are everywhere to be met with. The afforestation of this district by the conqueror, enforced by savagely severe forest laws, was regarded as an act of the greatest cruelty, and the violent deaths met by both of his sons, Richard and William Rufus—both of whom were killed by accidental arrow-wounds in the forest— were looked upon as special judgments of providence. A small breed of pony lives wild under its shelter.