30 
NATURAL HISTORY 
The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier- 
General Emanuel Scroop Howe, and his lady^ Ruperta, who 
was a natural daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret 
Hughs ; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family, who 
married a dowager Lady Pembroke ; Henry Bilson Legge 
and lady; and now Lord Stawel, their son.^ 
The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long 
surviving her husband ; and, at her death, left behind her 
many curious pieces of mechanism of her father^s con- 
structing, who was a distinguished mechanic and artist,^ 
as well as warrior ; and among the rest, a very complicated 
clock, lately in possession of Mr. Elmer, the celebrated 
game-painter at Farnham, in the county of Surrey. 
Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow 
range of enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different : 
for The Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, 
carrying a good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow 
to be large timber ; while Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, 
sandy, barren waste. 
The former, being all in the paris'h of Binsted, is about 
two miles in extent from north to south, and near as much 
from east to west ; and contains within it many woodlands 
and lawns, and the great lodge where the grantees reside ; 
and a smaller lodge called Goose Green ; and is abutted on 
by the parishes of Kingsley, Frinsham, Farnham and 
Bentley ; all of which have right of common. 
One thing is remarkable; that, though The Holt has 
been of old well stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by 
any pales or fences more than a common hedge, yet they 
were never seen within the limits of Wolmer ; nor were the 
^ On the expiration of the grant to Lord Stawel, the Commissioners 
of Woods and Forests resumed possession of The Holt. All the lands 
held by him, and two-thirds of the former open forest, were subsequently 
enclosed and planted. — Ed. 
^ This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto. — G. W. It would 
perhaps be more correct to say that he was the introducer only of this 
art into England. The invention it seems is due to Ludwig von Siegen, 
who about 1654 communicated the secret to Prince Rupert (cf. Wal- 
pole's " Anecdotes of Painters and Engravers," Bohn s edition, vol. iii. 
p. 393). — Ed. 
