NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 15 



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 

 Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists en- 

 tirely 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, 1 that " there 

 never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the south- 

 ern counties." But he was mistaken : for I myself have seen 

 cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers con- 

 sisted 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. 2 Besides the oak, I have also been 

 shown pieces of fossil wood of a paler color, and softer nature, 

 which the inhabitants called fir : but, upon a nice examination, 

 and trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them ; 

 and therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow 

 or alder, or some such aquatic tree. 



This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many 

 sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, 

 but breed there in the summer; such as lapwings, snipes, 

 wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few years, 

 teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good seasons on 

 the verge of this forest, into which they love to make excur- 

 sions ; and in particular, in the dry summers of 1740 and 1741, 

 and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree that 

 parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and some- 

 times thirty brace in a day. 



But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now 

 extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded much 



