WOLMER, FOREST DEER STEALING. 31 



lair, and when the calf was dropped, paring its 

 feet with a penknife to the quick, to prevent its 

 escape, till it was large and fat enough to he 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 extra- 

 ordinary manner : Some fellows, suspecting that a 

 calf new-fallen 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 

 huntsmen, 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 

 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, "sheep 

 excepted."* The reason, I presume, why sheepf 



* For this privilege the owner of that estate used to pay 

 to the king annually seven bushels of oats. 



f In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been 

 kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day. 



