i8 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



who had often seen grouse in the north of England, assured me 

 that it was a greyhen.* 



Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the 

 Fauna Selborniensis ; for another beautiful link in the chain of 

 beings is wanting, I mean the red deer, which toward the beginning 

 of this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made a 

 stately appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, named 

 Adams, whose great-grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation 

 taken in 1635), grandfather, father, and self, enjoyed the head 

 keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than an 

 hundred years. This person assures me, that his father has often 

 told him, that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Ports- 

 mouth road, did not think the forest of Wolmer beneath her royal 



* The vignette at the head of Letter VI. represents a view of Wolmer Forest as it now 

 appears, taken from the yard of Temple Farm-house. Wolmer Pond is seen upon the 

 right. 



This letter with the next alludes to subjects of far more interest to the naturalist than 

 would be at first supposed. At the time when White wrote, it may have been considered 

 that a wild " tract," seven miles by two-and-a-half in extent, consisting of moss and muir, 

 heath and fern, would not be worthy of much remark. Fortunately our author viewed it 

 differently, and it was, we have no doubt, one of his "charming places ; " he writes, " it 

 has often afforded me much entertainment both as a sportsman and as a naturalist. " With 

 how much interest will the present proprietor of Selborne, or any one who can follow the 

 feeling of these letters, now visit Wolmer Forest, and compare its present state with the 

 above description. Such facts as those recorded by White, are invaluable to either 

 20ologist or botanist, and the reclamation there, with the great changes which have taken 

 place incident to the increase of population and other causes, the change almost from 

 desolation to cultivation, must have materially affected the existence and distribution of 

 the wild animals and plants. In a series of years where attention has been given to the 

 results of these unavoidable changes, we have seen some species extirpated and others 

 assume their places. The influence of population on the existence and geographical 

 distribution of animal and vegetable life, with all its attendant circumstances of commerce, 

 and the necessity for increasing human food by cultivation, though comparatively unper- 

 ceived, is not so very slow in its results ; fifty years may almost entirely change the 

 zoology and botany of a district, and within such limited bounds as Wolmer Forest, the 

 extirpation of the black game would easily occur, though cultivation, particularly on the 

 borders of a sub-alpine county, is rather favourable than the reverse for this game. 

 Drainage makes a most important change on the wild vegetation : a large extent of new 

 plantation in the growth of half a century will materially affect the character of a county, 

 by rendering it a suitable abode for animals, birds, and insects before unknown to it, and 

 so would the cutting down of extensive old woods destroy or drive away other species 

 that delighted only in them. But population and cultivation bring other evils attendant 

 upon themselves. They extirpate or reduce the numbers of the rapacious animals, and 

 allow the increase of others, which naturally follow and accommodate themselves to the 

 circumstances, finding a more abundant supply of food. Rabbits have followed cultiva- 

 tion, and are often exceedingly injurious, their rapid increase rendering their extirpation 

 no easy matter. Rooks accompany cultivation, are familiar birds, and accommodate 

 themselves easily ; they are of immense utility in keeping under various entomological 

 pests that annoy the farmer, but they have in some parts increased most rapidly, and 

 finding in the produce of the land a sure and ample supply of food, they have resorted to 

 that and do occasionally much damage, so much so that in some districts anti-crow 

 associations have been formed for their destruction, and many thousands are annually 

 killed. The indiscriminate destruction of rapacious animals and birds by game-keepers 

 has led to the increase of other species, and of one in particular, the common wood- 

 pigeon ; this bird in some localities has become exceedingly numerous, assembling in 

 flocks of many hundreds, and in winter doing very great injury to the turnip crops ; anti- 

 pigeon associations have also been formed, and in Berwickshire no less than 8000 were 

 destroyed in one year. 



