GAME IN WOLMER FOREST. 13 



oak, I have also been shewn pieces of fossil wood, of a paler 

 colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants called fir ; but, 

 upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could discover 

 nothing- resinous in them ; and therefore rather suppose that 

 they were parts of a willow, or alder, or some such aquatic 

 tree.* 



This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts 

 of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but 

 breed there in the summer ; such as lapwings, snipes, wild- 

 ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few years, 

 teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good seasons on 

 the verge of this Forest, into which they love to make excur- 

 sions ; and in particular, in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, 

 and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree, that 

 parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes 

 thirty, brace in a day. 



But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now 

 extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded much 

 before shooting flying became so common, and that was the 

 heath-cock, or black game. When I was a little boy, I recollect 

 one coming now and then to my father's table. The last pack 

 remembered \vas killed about thirty-five years ago ; and within 

 these ten years, one solitary gray-hen was sprung by some 

 beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsman cried out, " A 

 hen pheasant ! " but a gentleman present, who had often seen 

 black game in the north of England, assured me that it was a 

 gray-hen.-(- 



some depth under ground, has an influence in promoting a thaw, as well 

 as the change of the weather from a freezing to a thawing state, is mani- 

 fest from this observation; viz. November 29, 1731, a little snow having 

 fallen in the night, it was, by eleven the next morning, mostly melted 

 away on the surface of the earth, except in several places in Bushy Park, 

 where there were drains dug and covered with earth, on which, the snow 

 continued to lie, whether those drains were full of water or dry ; as also 

 where elm-pipes lay under ground : a plain proof this, that those drains 

 intercepted the warmth of the earth from ascending from greater depths 

 below them ; for the snow lay where the drain had more than four feet 

 depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, and the 

 tops of walls." See Hales's H&mastatics, p. 360. Quere, Might not 

 such observations be reduced to domestic use, by promoting the discovery 

 of old obliterated drains and wells about houses ; and in Roman stations 

 and camps, lead to the finding of pavements, baths, and graves, and oth--r 

 hiddeu relics of curious antiquity ? 



* Fossils of this kind, including oaks and pines, are common in most 

 marshes and bogs of Europe En. 



j- It is very doubtful whether the black grouse ever was plentiful in 

 the less mountainous counties of England. At present they are very 



