OF SELBORNE. 39 



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 detected, and 

 rendered liable to the lash of the law. Neither fines 

 nor imprisonments can deter them : so impossible is it 

 to extinguish the spirit of sporting, which seems to be 

 inherent in human nature. 



General Howe turned out some German wild boars 

 and sows in his forests, to the great terror of the neigh- 

 bourhood ; and, at one time, a wild bull or buffalo : but 

 the country rose upon them, and destroyed them 5 . 



A very large fall of timber, consisting 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, Bentley and Kingsley, assert that it 

 belongs to them ; and, assembling in a riotous manner, 

 have actually taken it all away. One man, who keeps 

 a team, has carried home, for his share, forty stacks of 

 wood. Forty-five of these people his lordship has 

 served with actions 6 . These trees, which were very 



said ; but the red deer do not avoid the places to which the others are 

 accustomed to resort. 



A most marked case of the adherence of deer to their respective walks 

 obtains in the Forest of Dean. The Forest adjoins immediately to the 

 High Meadow Woods, the property of Lord Gage, and in both of them 

 fallow deer are kept. The deer of the Forest are all black: those of the 

 High Meadow Woods are pale or spotted. A stray individual from either 

 would be instantly recognised amid the herds of the other. But it never 

 happens that either wanders from its own companions or quits its bounds. 

 E. T. B. 



5 German boars and sows were also turned out by Charles the First 

 in the New Forest, which bred and increased. Their stock is supposed 

 to exist now, remarkable for the smallness of their hind quarters. See 

 an Engraving of one in Gilpin's Forest Scenery, ii. 118. MITFORD. 



6 It appears that the defendants in these actions, though they made a 

 show of resistance, suffered judgment to go by default. The question 

 of right had, in fact, been tried in 1741, and determined against the 

 claimants. Yet notwithstanding this, so soon after as 1788, on the occa- 



