NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 17 



"there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the 

 southern counties. " But he was mistaken : for I myself have seen 

 cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers consisted 

 of a black hard wood, looking like oaV, which the owners assured 

 me they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or 

 some such instruments : but the peat is so much cut out, and the 

 moors have been so well examined, that none has been found of 

 late.* Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil 

 wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants 

 called fir : but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could 

 discover nothing resinous in them ; and therefore rather suppose 

 that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic 

 tree. 



This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of 

 wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed there 

 in the summer j such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I 

 have discovered within these few years, teals. Partridges in vast 

 plenty are bred in good seasons on the verge of this forest, into 

 which they love to make excursions : and in particular, in the dry 

 summer of 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to 

 such a degree that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty 

 and sometimes thirty brace in a day. 



But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct, 

 which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting 

 flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, black-game, 

 or grouse. When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and 

 then to my father's table. The last pack remembered was killed 

 about thirty-five years ago ; and within these ten years one solitary 

 greyhen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The 

 sportsmen cried out, " A hen pheasant ; " but a gentleman present, 



* Old people have assured me, that on a winter's morning they have discovered these 

 trees, in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer over the space where they are com 

 cealed than in the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to be a fanciful notion, but 

 consistent with true philosophy. Dr. Hales saith, "That the warmth of the earth, at 

 some depth under ground, has an influence in promoting a thaw, as well as the change of 

 the weather from a freezing to a thawing state, is manifest, from this observation, viz., 

 Nov. 29, 1731, a little snow having fallen in the night, it was, by eleven the next morning, 

 mostly melted away on the surface of the earth, except in several places in Bushy Park, 

 where there were drains dug and covered with earth, on which the snow continued to lie, 

 whether those drains were full of water or dry ; as also where elm-pipes lay under ground : 

 a plain proof this, that those drains intercepted the warmth of the earth from ascending 

 from greater depths below them ; for the snow lay where the drain had more than four 

 feet depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, and the tops of walls. " 

 See Hales s " Hsemastatics," p. 360. QUERY, Might not such observations be reduced 

 to domestic use, by promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about 

 houses ; and in Roman stations and camps lead to the finding of pavements, baths, and 

 graves, and other hidden relics of curious antiquity ? 



