HEATH FIRES. 17 



ner : Some fellows, suspecting that a calf new-fallen was de 

 posited in a certain spot of thick fern, went, with a lurcher, to 

 surprise it ; when the parent-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 incon- 

 venient 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 irregulari- 

 ties are removed, are of considerable service to neighbourhoods 

 that verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat and turf 

 for their firing, with fuel for the burning of 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 sheepf 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 Wm. 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 communi- 

 cated 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 browze 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 whole circuit round looking like the 



* For this privilege the owner 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, uo sheep are 

 admitted to this day. 



