18 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



little while ago that, over their ale, they used to recount the exploits of 

 their youth ; such as watching the pregnant hind to her lair, and, when 

 the calf was dropped, paring its feet with a penknife to the quick to 

 prevent its escape, till it was large and fat enough to be killed ; the 

 shooting at one of their neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by 

 moonshine, mistaking him for a deer ; and the losing a dog in the 

 following extraordinary manner : Some fellows, suspecting that a calf 

 new-fallen was deposited 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 incon- 

 venient 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 irregularities are 

 removed, are of considerable service to neighbourhoods that verge upon 

 them, by furnishing them with peat and turf for their firing ; with fuel 

 for the burning tbeir lime ; and with ashes for their grasses ; and by 

 maintaining their geese and their stock of young cattle at little or 

 no expense. 



The manor-farm of the parish of Greatham has an admitted 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." * 



contemplated a few years since ; and a Bill was lately proposed to be introduced into 

 Parliament "to extinguish the right of the crown to stock the New Forest in 

 Hampshire with deer and other wild beasts of the forest, and to empower her 

 Majesty to enclose the several portions of the said Forest." This would have been 

 regretted by White, for the wild and natural character of the county will be 

 changed, and with that a corresponding variation will occur in its inhabitants. On 

 the continent this is carried to a greater and more serious extent. In a book lately 

 published, "Chamois Hunting in Bavaria," it is stated that by the increase ot 

 poaching, and the assumed right of the peasantiy to consider the game as their 

 own, bro\ight on probably by the excessive preservation, and therefore temptation, 

 it has been deemed necessary to extirpate it. In one chase of a circumference 

 of about 60 English miles, a sporting count calculated that he would be able 

 every year to kill 300 roebucks, 80 stags, and 100 chamois, but this was done 

 at some cost. The count kept twenty-four game-keepers picked men, at the 

 commencement of their preservation they shot seven poachers, and one of the 

 keepers who had killed four was himself shot. Where the game was thus abundant 

 and kept up at such a price ! one of those political changes took place which gave 

 the right of shooting to every individual of the community, and the count, some- 

 what to diminish his pecuniary losses, ordered the game to be destroyed. This was 

 done by proprietors and people, and in a very short period the extermination 

 was almost completed. In another chapter the same author writes : " The noble 

 proprietors of the forests bordering the Danube, in the neighbourhood of Donan 

 Stauf, paid every year a considerable sum to the peasants, as indemnity for the 

 damage done to their crops by the game ; and according as the price of corn 

 rose these sums were increased. As the money received was generally more than 

 adequate to the loss sustained, the peasantry were satisfied, and found in the 

 arrangement no cause of complaint; when suddenly, in 1848, although the 



S receding years the indemnity received by them had been nearly doubled, they 

 iscovered that such a state of things could exist no longer ; and thus, supreme 

 authority ceding to popular will, a general extermination of the game took place 

 throughout the land." 



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

 seven bushels of oats. 



