20 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Some fellows, suspecting that a calf new-fallen was de- 

 posited 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 huntsmen, 

 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 irre- 

 gularities are removed, are of considerable service to neigh- 

 bourhoods 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 main- 

 taining their geese and their stock of young cattle at little 

 or no expense. 



The manor-farm of the parish of Greatham has an admit- 

 ted 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."* The reason, I presume, 

 why sheep f are excluded, is, because, being such close 

 grazers, they would pick out all the finest grasses, and 

 hinder the deer from thriving. 



Though (by statute 4 and 5, W. and Mary, c. 23) "to 

 burn on any waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, 

 any grig, ling, heath and furze, goss or fern, is punishable 



* For this privilege the owners of that estate used to pay to the 

 king annually seven bushels of oats. 



t In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up 

 till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day. 



