16 NATURAL HISTORY 



account of Selbome would be very imperfect, as it is a district 

 abounding with many curious productions, both animal and 

 vegetable ; and has often afforded me much entertainment both 

 as a sportsman and as a naturalist. 



The royal forest of Wolmer is a tract of land of about seven 

 miles in length, by two and a half in breadth, running nearly 

 from North to South, and is abutted on, to begin to the South, 

 and so to proceed eastward, by the parishes of Greatham, 

 Lysse, Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex; by 

 Bramslwt, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists 

 entirely of sand covered with heath and fern ; but is somewhat 

 diversified with hills and dales, without having one standing 

 tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters 

 stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with sub- 

 terraneous trees ; though Dr. Plot says positively, k that 

 "there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses 

 "of the southern counties." But he was mistaken: for 



I myself have seen cottages on the verge of this wild district, 

 whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, 

 which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by 

 probing the soil with spits, or some such instruments : but 

 the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so well 

 examined, that none has been found of late. 1 Besides the 



k See his Hist, of Staffordshire. 



1 Old people have assured me, that on a winter's morning they have 

 discovered these trees, in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer 

 over the space where they were concealed, than on the surrounding- 

 morass. Nor does this seem to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with 

 true philosophy. Dr. Hales saith, " That the warmth of the earth, at 

 t( some depth under ground, has an influence in promoting a thaw, as well as 

 u the change of the weather from a freezing to a thawing state, is manifest^ 

 {( from this observation, viz. Nov. 29, 1731, a little snow having fallen in 

 " the night, it was, by eleven the next morning, mostly melted away on , 

 " the surface of the earth, except in several places in Bushy-park, where 



II there were drains dug and covered with earth, on which the snow con- 

 " tinned to lie, whether those drains were full of water or dry; as also 

 " where elm-pipes lay under ground : a plain proof this, that those drains 

 " intercepted the warmth of the earth from ascending from greater depths 

 " below them : for the snow lay where the drain had more than four feet 

 "depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, 



