NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 27 



Holt forest : one-fifth of which, it is said, belongs to the 

 grantee, Lord Stawell. He lays claim also to the lop and 

 top ; but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and 

 Frinsham, Bentley and Kingsley 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. 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. 



LETTER X. 



August 4th, 1767. 

 It has been my misfortune never to have had any neigh- 

 bours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of 

 natural knowledge; so that, for want of a companion to 

 quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I have 

 made but slender progress in a kind of information to 

 which I have been attached from my childhood. 



As to swallows (Hirundines rusticce) being found in a 

 torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight or any 

 part of this country, I never heard any such account worth 

 attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, 

 assures me, that when he was a great boy, some workmen, 



