3 2 The Natural History of Selborne 



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 irregularities 

 are removed, are of considerable service to the neighbourhoods 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 grazers, 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 confine- 

 ment in the house of correction ; " yet, in this forest, about March 

 or April, according to the dry ness 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 nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation, the 



* 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. 



