HOLT FOREST. 21 



Wolmer ever known to haunt the thickets or glades of the 

 Holt* 



At present the deer of the Holt are much thinned 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 neighbourhood , 

 and, at one time, a wild bull or buffalo : but the country rose 

 upon them, and destroyed them. 



A very large fall of timber, consisting of about one thousand 

 oaks, has been cut this spring (viz. 1 784) 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 Bins ted and Frinsham, Bentley and Kings- 

 ley, 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. These trees, which were very sound, and in 

 high perfection, were winter-cut, viz. in February and March, 

 before the bark would run.f In old times, the Holt was 

 estimated to be eighteen miles, computed measure, from 

 water carriage, viz. from the town of Chertsey, on the Thames ; 

 but now it is not half that distance, since the Wey is made 

 navigable up to the town of Godalming, in the county of Surrey. 



* There is a curious fact, not generally known, which is, that at one 

 period the horns of stags grew into a much greater number of ramifications 

 than at the present day. Some have supposed this to have arisen from the 

 greater abundance of food, and from the animal having more repose, 

 before population became so dense. In some individuals these multiplied 

 to an extraordinary extent. There is one in the museum of Hesse Cassel 

 with twenty-eight antlers. Baron Cuvier mentions one with sixty-six, 

 or thirty-three on each horn. ED. 



f The superiority of wood cut in winter arises from its being divested 

 of sap at that season of the year. Timber felled in summer is liable to 

 crack, and is very subject to the dry-rot ; both of which are caused by 

 the sap not having properly escaped in the process of drying. The sap 

 rises only in the spring, and descends at the fall of the year. ED. 



