HOLT FOREST. 



23 



to west, and contains within it many woodlands and lawns, and 

 the great lodge where the grantees resided, 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. 



At present the deer of the Holt are much thinned and reduced 

 by the night hunters, who perpetually harass them in spite of the 

 efforts of numerous keepers, and the severe penalties that have 

 been put in force against them as often as they have been de- 

 tected and rendered liable to the lash of the law. Neither fines 

 nor imprisonments can deter them : so impossible is it to extin- 

 guish the spirit of sporting, which seems to be inherent in hu- 

 man nature. 



General Howe turned out some 

 German wild boars and sows in his 

 forests, to the great terror of the 

 neighbourhood; and, at one time, a 

 wild bull or buffalo : but the country 

 rose upon them and destroyed them, 



A very large fall of timber, con- wild Boar, 



sisting of about one thousand oaks, has been cut this spring (viz. 

 1784) in the Holt forest, one fifth of which, it is said, belongs 

 to the grantee, Lord Stawel. He lays claim also to the lop and 

 top : but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and Frinsham, 



Tesla, two leagues and a half west of Oaxaca, in Mexico, the trunk of which (as measured by 

 Mr. Exton, in 1827) is 127, English feet in circumference, and 130 feet in height, and which ap- 

 peared in the prime of its growth, and had not a single dead branch, being calculated by the 

 younger De Candolle, to be older than even the baobabs themselves. The living temple of the sa- 

 cred banyan, and, indeed, many that to enumerate would far exceed the limits of a note. Pro- 

 bably the largest tree now growing in Europe is the gigantic Spanish chestnut (castaiiea vesca) on 

 Mount Etna. En- 



