OF SELBORNE 19 



was framed before. And, therefore, a late bishop of 

 Winchester, when urged to re-stock Waltham Chase,^ 

 refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate, replying that 

 " 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 

 pregnant hind to her 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 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 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? The reason, I 



^ This chase remains unstocked to this day. The bishop was Dr. 

 Hoadly, 



2 For this privilege the owner of that estate used to pay to the king 

 annually seven bushels of oats. 



