NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 23 



LETTER IX 



BY way of supplement, I shall trouble you once more on 

 this subject, to inform you that Wolmer, with her sister forest 

 Ayles Holt, alias Alice Holt, 1 as it is called in old records, is 

 held by grant from the crown for a term of years. 



The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier-Gen- 

 eral Emanuel Scroope Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, who was 

 a natural daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughes ; a 

 Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family, who married a 

 dowager Lady Pembroke; Henry Bilson Legge and lady; 

 and now Lord Stawell, their son. 



The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long 

 surviving her husband; and, at her death, left behind her 

 many curious pieces of mechanism of her father's construct- 

 ing, who was a distinguished mechanic and artist, 2 as well as 

 warrior ; and among the rest, a very complicated clock, lately 

 in possession of Mr. Elmer, the celebrated game painter at 

 Farnham, in the county of Surrey. 



Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range 

 of enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different ; for the 

 Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a 

 good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to be large tim- 

 ber; while Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren 

 waste. 



The former being all in the parish of Binsted, is about two 

 miles in extent from north to south, and near as much from 

 east to west; and contains within it many wood-lands and 

 lawns, and the great lodge where the grantees reside, and a 

 smaller lodge called Goose Green ; and is abutted on by the 

 parishes of Kingsley, Frinsham, Farnham, and Bentley ; all of 

 which have right of common. 



One thing is remarkable, that though the Holt has been of 

 old well stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by any pales 

 or fences more than a common hedge, yet they were never 

 seen within the limits of Wolmer ; nor were the red deer of 

 Wolmer ever known to haunt the thickets or glades of the 

 Holt. 



