WOLMER FOREST THE BLACK ACT. 23 



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 extraordinary 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 incon- 

 venient to the huntsman, 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, bidentibus 

 exceptis 1 . The reason, I presume, why sheep 2 

 are excluded is, because, being such close grazers, 



1 For this privilege the owner of that estate used to pay 

 to the king annually seven bushels of oats. 



2 In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been 

 kept up till lately, no sheep are.admitted to this day. 



