34 NATURAL HISTORY 
with ashes for their grasses; and by maintaining 
their geese and their stock of young cattle at little 
or no expense. 
The manor farm of the parish of Greatham has 
an admitted claim, I see (by an old record taken 
from the Tower of London), of turning all live- 
stock on the forest at proper seasons, bidentibus 
exceptis.* ‘The reason, I presume, why sheepf are 
excluded is, because, being such close grazers, they 
would pick out all the finest grasses, and hinder the 
deer from thriving. 
Though (by statute 4 and 5 Wm. and Mary, c. 
23) “to burn on any waste, between Candlemas 
and Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath and furze, 
goss or fern, is punishable with confinement in the 
House of Correction,” &c., yet in this forest, about 
March or April, according to the dryness of the 
season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up that 
they often get to a masterless head, and, catching 
the hedges, have sometimes been communicated to 
the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great 
damage has ensued. ‘The plea for these burnings 
is, that when the old coat of heath, &c., is consu- 
med, young will sprout up, and afford much tender 
browse for cattle; but where there is large old furze, 
the fire, following the roots, consumes the very 
ground, so that for hundreds of acres nothing is to 
be seen but smother and desolation, the whole cir- 
cuit round looking like the cinders ofa volcano; and 
the soil being quite exhausted, no traces of vegeta- 
* For this privilege the owner of that estate used to pay tothe 
king annually seven bushels of oats. 
+ In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept 
up till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day. 
