NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
15 
district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, 
which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing 
the soil with spits, or some such instruments : but the peat is so much 
cut out, and the moors have been so well examined, that none has been 
found of late.^ Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of 
fossil wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants 
called fir : but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could 
discover nothing resinous in them ; and therefore rather suppose that 
they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic tree. 
This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of wild 
fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed there in the 
summer; such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered 
within these few years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in 
good seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to make 
excursions : and in particular, in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, 
and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree that parties of 
unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in 
a day. 
But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct, 
which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting 
flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, black-game, or 
grouse. When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and then 
to my father's table. The last pack remembered was killed about 
thirty-five years ago ; and within these ten years one solitary greyhen 
was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsmen 
cried out, "A hen pheasant;" but a gentleman present, who had 
often seen grouse in the north of England, assured me that it was a 
greyhen.f 
*-01d people have assured me, that on a winter's morning they have discovered 
these trees, in the bogs, by the hoar frost, which lay longer over the space where 
they are concealed than in the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to 
be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy. Dr. Hales saith, " That 
the warmth of the earth, at some depth under ground, has an influence in 
promoting a thaw, as well as the change of the weather from a freezing to a 
thawing state, is manifest, from this observation, viz., Nov. 29, 1731, a little snow 
having fallen in the night, it was, by eleven the next morning, mostly melted away 
on the surface of the earth, except in several places in Bushy Park, where there 
were drains dug and covered with earth, on which the snow continued to lie, 
whether those drains were full of water or dry ; as also where elm-pipes lay under 
ground : a plain proof this, that those drains intercepted the warmth of the 
earth from ascending from greater depths below them ; for the snow lay where 
the drain had more than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie 
on thatch, tiles, and the tops of walls." — See Hales's "Hsemastatics," p. 360. 
Query, Might not such observations be reduced to domestic use, by promoting 
the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about houses ; and in Roman 
stations and camps lead to the finding of pavements, baths and graves, and 
other hidden relics of curious antiquity ? 
t The vignette at the he.id of Letter VI., represents a view of Wolmer Forest 
as it now appears, taken from the yard of Temple Farm House. Wolmer Pond 
is seen upon the right. 
This letter with the next alludes to subjects of far more interest to the 
naturalist than would be at first supposed. At the time when White wrote, it 
may have been considered that a wild " tract," seven miles by two-and-a-half in 
extent, consisting of moss and muir, heath and fern, would not be worthy 
of much remark. Fortunately our author viewed it differently, and it was, we 
have no doubt, one of his " charming places ; " he writes, "it has often afforded 
