20 NATURAL HISTORY 



fere with that severe and sanguinary act called the black act, 1 * 

 which now comprehends more felonies than any law that ever 

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

 when urged to re-stock Waltham Chase, 1 " refused, from a mo- 

 tive worthy of a prelate, replying that " It had done mis- 

 chief 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 it's feet with a penknife to the quick to prevent it's 

 escape, till it was large and fat enough to be killed; the shoot- 

 ing 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 irregu- 

 larities are removed, are of considerable service to neighbour- 

 hoods 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 Lon- 

 don) of turning all live stock on the forest, at proper seasons, 



m Statute 9 Geo. I. c. 22. 



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

 Jloadly. 



