NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
327 
but the tree is subject to them, aud the wood wheu cut up is 
beautifully marked with a multitude of small circles like the 
finest walnut or bird's-eye maple. 
I forgot to say, with regard to the oak which was blown down, 
that no tree which fell in this way, if of any size, can be put up 
again and live. I have frequently been consulted, but never 
advise it. The case is hopeless. 
Eavens, p. G. — These birds are now^ getting very scarce, 
by reason of the old ones being shot down and the young ones 
taken. Davy, the bird-catcher, used to get a quantity of young 
ones, as many as four nests in a season, from the Isle of AVight. 
The young ones of late years haA^e come from Plymouth. 
Three or four years since, tliere were several nests on a 
gentleman's estate at Romford. Formerly there were numbers 
in Hainliault Forest. 
Bird-dealers formerly paid 30s. per dozen for good strong 
young ravens, now nestlings fetch 15s. each wholesale. The 
shepherds in the Isle of Wight say ravens prey largely upon 
wild rabbits, young and old. Ravens are, in the Isle of Wight, 
destructive to newly dropped lambs, 
Mr. Bartlett receives annually several ravens at the Zoological 
Gardens. They are kept by their owners till they get trouble- 
some, and are then sent to the Gardens. 
Holt and Wolmee Forests, p. 25. — A correspondent writes 
me : — 
" I know both Holt and Wolmer forests well. The former is 
on the Gault Clay, with overlying drift beds ; the latter upon 
the Greensand formation — terms unknown in White's time. 
All that remains of both forests is the property of the Crown, 
and they are covered with thriving young plantations. The 
old trees are all gone, and the whole is a most uninteresting- 
country — nothing to see, nothing doing, and no one living there 
except a few woodmen in charge. 
"The ironstone to which Mr. White refers as existing in Holt 
Forest was common to all the Greensand formation, and used 
to be smelted in Sussex by wood till the coal-smelting drove it 
out of tlie market. 
" The matter to which he refers about the disputes as to the 
timber was common over all England in those days, as it was 
not known often to whom trees growing on the wastes belonged. 
All was finally settled and decided by the Disaftbresting Acts 
passed in the years from 1815 to 1820, and the commons and 
forests divided into severalty among all the different owners." 
The railings round 8t. Paul's Cathedral, a great portion of 
