of Selborne 21 



ever was framed before. And, therefore, a late bishop 

 of Winchester, when urged to re-stock Waltham-chase,^ 

 refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate, replying that 

 "it had done mischief enough already." 



Our old race of deer-stealers are hardly extinct yet : it 

 was but a little while ago that, over their ale, they used 

 to recount the exploits of their youth ; such as watching 

 the pregnant hind to her lair, and, when the calf was 

 dropped, paring its feet with a penknife to the quick to 

 prevent its escape, till it was large and fat enough to be 

 killed; the shooting at one of their neighbours with a 

 bullet in a turnip-field by moonshine, mistaking him for 

 a deer; and the losing a dog in the following extra- 

 ordinary manner : — Some fellows, suspecting that a calf 

 new-fallen was deposited in a certain spot of thick fern, 

 went, with a lurcher, to surprise it ; when the parent hind 

 rushed out of the brake, and, taking a vast spring with 

 all her feet close together, pitched upon the neck of the 

 dog, and broke it short in two. 



Another temptation to idleness and sporting was a 

 number of rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and 

 dry places: but these being inconvenient to the hunts- 

 men, on account of their burrows, when they came to 

 take away the deer, they permitted the country people to 

 destroy them all. 



Such forests and wastes, when their allurements to 

 irregularities are removed, are of considerable service 

 to neighbourhoods that verge upon them, by furnishing 

 them with peat and turf for their firing ; with fuel for the 

 burning their lime ; and with ashes for their grasses ; and 

 by maintaining their geese and their stock of young cattle 

 at little or no expense. 



The manor farm of the parish of Greatham has an 

 admitted claim, I see (by an old record taken from the 

 Tower of London), of turning all live stock on the forest 

 at proper seasons, bidefiUbus exceptisP" The reason, I 



^ This chase remains unstocked to this day ; the bishop was 

 Dr. Hoadly. 



'^ For this privilege the owner of that estate used to pay to the 

 king annually seven bushels of oats. 



