The Natural History of Selborne 27 



3*>tackcoch 



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 excursions : and in particular, in the dry summer of 

 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree 

 that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes 

 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 before shooting 

 flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, black game, 

 or grouse. When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and 

 then to my father's table. The last pack remembered was killed 

 about thirty-five years ago ; and within these ten years one solitary 

 greyhen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The 

 sportsmen cried out, " A hen pheasant ; " but a gentleman present, 



planted with Scotch firs. Legends of trees having once existed on bare tracts have 

 often grown up through a misapprehension of the meaning of the word forest. 

 Deer-forests cannot, of course, be thickly wooded : the word is used in this case in 

 its original and proper meaning. ED. 



