32 NATURAL HISTORY 



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 some- 

 times been communicated to the underwoods, woods, 

 and coppices, where great damage has ensued 7 . 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 cinders of a volcano ; and, 

 the soil being quite exhausted, no traces of vegetation 

 are to be found for years. These conflagrations, as they 

 take place usually with a north-east or east wind, much 

 annoy this village with their smoke, and often alarm 

 the country ; and, once in particular, I remember that 

 a gentleman, who lives beyond Andover, coining to my 

 house, when he got on the downs between that town 

 and Winchester, at twenty-five miles distance, was sur- 

 prised much with smoke and a hot smell of fire ; and 

 concluded that Alresford was in flames ; but, when he 

 came to that town, he then had apprehensions for the 

 next village, and so on to the end of his journey. 



On two of the most conspicuous eminences of this 

 forest stand two arbours or bowers, made of the boughs 

 of oaks; the one called Waldon-lodge, the other Brim- 

 stone-lodge : these the keepers renew annually on the 

 feast of St. Barnabas, taking the old materials for a 

 perquisite. The farm called Blackmoor, in this parish, 



fine sight, and gives a peculiar and indescribable aspect to the landscape. 

 The process is productive in the succeeding summer, of an abundant crop 

 of young shoots of heath and grass, upon which the sheep feast luxuri- 

 ously. RENNIE. 



7 The description of the conflagration arising from the heath-fires here 

 mentioned, reminds the scholar of the stubble-burning described in Vir- 

 gil's Georgics, i. 84, and the commentary on the passage, by the elegant 

 and learned Mr. Holdsworth, p. 52. Compare Virgilii ./En. ii. 304. Ovid. 

 Epist. xv. 9. Sil. Ital. vii. 3C5. MITFORD. 



