a motive worthy of a prelate, replying that it had 

 done mischief enough already." 



Our old race of deer-stealers are hardly extinct 

 yet : it was but a little while ago that they used to 

 recount, over their ale, 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 man- 

 ner :— 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 

 huntsmen, on account of their burrows, when they 

 came to take away the deer they permitted the coun- 

 try 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 



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