OF SELBORNE. 33 
comprehends more felonies than any law that ever 
was framed before ; and, therefore, a late Bisho 
of Winchester, when urged to re-stock Waltham 
Chase,* refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate, 
replying, “It had done mischief enough already.” 
Our old race of deer-stealers are hardly extinct 
yet. It was but a little while ago that, over their 
ale, they used to recount the exploits of their youth : 
such as watching the hind to her lair, and, when 
the calf was found, paring its feet with a penknife 
to the quick, to prevent its escape till it was large 
and fat enough to be killed; the shooting at one of 
their neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by 
moonshine, mistaking him for a deer; and the 
losing a dog in the following extraordinary manner: 
Some fellows, suspecting that a calf was deposited 
in a certain spot of thick fern, went with a lurcher 
to surprise it; when the parent hind rushed out of 
the brake, and, taking a vast spring, with all her 
feet close together, pitched upon the neck of the 
dog, and broke it short in two. 
Another temptation to idleness and sporting was 
a number of rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks 
and dry places; but these being inconvenient to 
the huntsman on account of their burrows, when 
they came to take away the deer, they permitted 
the country people to destroy them all. 
Such forests and wastes, when their allurements 
to irregularities are removed, are of considerable 
service to neighbourhoods that verge upon them, 
by furnishing them with peat and turf for their 
firing ; with fuel for the burning their lime, and 
* This chase remains unstocked to this day: the bishop was 
Dr. Hoadley. 
