32 'The Natural History of Selborne 



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 the neigh- 

 bourhoods 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 presume, 

 why sheep -f- are excluded, is, because, being such close gra- 

 zers, they would pick out all the finest grasses, and hinder 

 the deer from thriving. 



Though (by statute 4 and 5 W. and Mary, c. 23) " to burn 

 on any waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, 

 ling, heath and furze, goss or fern, is punishable with whipping 

 and confinement in the house of correction ; " yet, in this 

 forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the 

 season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up, that they often get 

 to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes 

 been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, 

 where great damage has ensued. The plea for these burnings 

 is, that, when the old coat of heath, &c., is consumed, young 

 will sprout up, and afford much tender brouze for cattle ; but, 

 where there is large old furze, the fire, following the roots, 

 consumes the very ground ; so that for hundreds of acres 



* For this privilege the owners of that estate used to pay to the king 

 annually seven bushels of oats. t In the Holt, where a full stock of 

 fallow-deer has been kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day. 



