LETT. Yll.] NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 19 
and sanguinary Act called the Black Act (9 Geo. I. c. 22), wliicli 
comprehends more felonies tlian any law that ever was framed 
before. And therefore, Dr. Iloadley, the Bishop of Winchester, 
when urged to re-stock Waltham- clrise, refused, from 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 enongli to be killed ; the shooting at one of their 
neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by moonshine, Tuis- 
taking him for a deer ; and the losing a dog in the following 
extraordinary manner : — Some felloAvs, 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 country people to destroy them alk 
Sucli forests and wastes, when their allurements to irregulari- 
ties are removed, are of considerable ser\ ice to neighbourhoods 
that verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat and turf 
for their firing ; Avitli 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, 
bidentihus exceptis. For this privilege the owner of that estate 
used to pay to the king annually seven bushels of oats. In the 
Holt Forest, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up 
till lately, no sheep are admitted. The reason, I })resume, Ijeing 
c 2 
