22 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBOENE. 
and widgeons, of various denominations ; where they preen and solace, 
and rest themselves, till towards sunset, when they issue forth in little 
parties (for in their natural state they are all birds of the night) to 
feed in the brooks and meadows ; returning again with the dawn of the 
morning. Had this lake an arm or two more, and were it planted 
round with thick covert (for now it is perfectly naked), it might make a 
valuable decoy. 
Yet neither its extent, nor the clearness of its water, nor the resort 
of various and curious fowls, nor its picturesque groups of cattle, can 
render this meer so remarkable as the great quantity of coins that 
were found in its bed about forty years ago. But, as such discoveries 
more properly belong to the antiquities of this place, I shall 
suppress all particulars for the present, till I enter professedly on my 
series of letters respecting the more remote history of this village and 
district. 
LETTEE IX. 
TO THE SAME. 
By way of supplement, I shall trouble you once more on this subject, 
to inform you that Wolmer, with her sister forest Ayles Holt, alias 
Alice Holt,* as it is called in old records, is held by grant from the 
crown for a term of years. 
The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier-General 
Emanuel Scroope Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, who was a natural 
daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughes ; a Mr. Mordaunt, of 
the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pembroke ; 
Henry Bilson Legge and lady ; and now Lord Stawell, 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 constructing, who was a distinguished 
mechanic and artist,f 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 dilFerent ; 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 parish of Binsted, is about two miles in 
extent from north to south, and near as much from east to west ; and 
* "In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest, in Scaccar. 36 Edw. III., it is called 
Aisholt." 
In the same, "Tit. Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus Rex habet nnam 
capellam in haia sua de Kingesle." "Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parous ; a Gall, 
haie and haye." — Spelman's Glossary. 
t This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto. 
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