NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 15 



district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, 

 which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing 

 the soil with spits, or some such instruments : but the peat is so much 

 cut out, and the moors have been so well examined, that none has been 

 found of late.* Besides the oak, I have also been shown 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 

 excursions : 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, black-game, or 

 grouse. When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and then 

 to my father's table. The last pack remembered was killed about 

 thirty-five years ago ; and within these ten years one solitary greyhen 

 was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsmen 

 cried out, "A hen pheasant;" but a gentleman present, who had 

 often seen grouse in the north of England, assured me that it was a 

 greyhen.f 



* Old people have assured me, that on a winter's morning they have discovered 

 these trees, in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer over the space where 

 they are concealed than in the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to 

 be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy. Dr. Hales saith, " That 

 the warmth of the earth, at 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 manifest, from this observation, viz., Nov. 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 " Hsemastatics, " p. 360. 

 QUERY, 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 

 other hidden relics of curious antiquity? 



t The vignette at the head of Letter VI., represents a view of Wolmer Forest 

 as it now appears, taken from the yard of Temple Farm House. Wolmer Pond 

 is seen upon the right. 



This letter with the next alludes to subjects of far more interest to the 

 naturalist than would be at first supposed. At the time when White wrote, it 

 may have been considered that a wild " tract," seven miles by two-and-a-half in 

 extent, consisting of moss and muir, heath and fern, would not be worthy 

 of much remark. Fortunately our author viewed it differently, and it was, we 

 have no doubt, one of his " charming places ; " he writes, "it has often afforded 



