20 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Some fellows, suspecting that a calf new-fallen was 

 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 t 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. 



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