OF SELBORNE 27 



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 extra- 

 ordinary 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 inconvenient to the hunts- 

 men, 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 their 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, bideniibus exceptis.* The reason, I 

 presume, why sheep f 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, 



* For this privUege the owner 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. 



