HOLT FOREST. 
23 
to west, and contains within it many woodlands and lawns, and 
the great lodge where the grantees resided, and a smaller lodge 
called Goose-green, and is abutted on by the parishes of Kingsley, 
Frinsham, Farnham, and Bentley, aU 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 red deer of Wolmer / 
ever known to haunt the thickets or glades of the Holt. 
At present the deer of the Holt are much thinned and reduced 
by the night hunters, who perpetually harass them in spite of the 
efforts of numerous keepers, and the severe penalties that have 
been put in force against them as often as they have been de- 
tected and rendered Hable to the lash of the law. Neither fines 
nor imprisonments can deter them : so impossible is it to extin- 
guish the spirit of sporting, which seems to be inherent in hu- 
man nature. 
General Howe turned out some 
German wild boars and sows in his 
forests, to the great terror of the 
neighbourhood; and, at one time, a 
wild bull or buffalo : but the country ^^^^^^Ife^^^^^f^J! 
rose upon them and destroyed them. ^^^^^^I^.'IJ^^^? 
A very large fall of timber, con- wiid Boa^ 
sisting of about one thousand oaks, has been cut this spring (viz. 
1784) in the Holt forest, one fifth of which, it is said, belongs 
to the grantee. Lord Stawel. He lays claim also to the lop and 
top : but the poor of the parishes of Binsted and Frinsharn, 
tries. The stately forests of Java, where the trees average a height of from 150 to 200 feet, the 
latter being (to adduce as familiar a comparison as possible) about the altitude of the London 
monument, and after contemplating which, Sir Stamford Raffles speaks of the « pigmy vegeta- 
tion'^ of Europe. The huge zamang of Guayra, in South America, a beautiful species of min^osa, 
whose enormous extent of branches covers a hemispherical top 614 feet in circumference, and of 
which Humboldt observes that " the first conquerors found it nearly in the same state in which 
we now see it," and adds that " since it has been attentively observed no change has been no- 
ticed in Its size or form." The majestic baobabs of Africa, exceeding 100 feet in girth, calculated 
by Adanson to be upwards of 5000 years old, and considered by Humboldt to be the oldest organic 
monument of our planet. The immense deciduous cypress, in the church-yard of Santa Maria da 
Tesla, two leagues and a half west of Oaxaca, in Mexico, the trunk of which (as measured by 
Mr. Exton, in 1827) is 127; English feet in circumference, and 130 feet in height, and which ap- 
peared in the prime of its growth, and had not a single dead branch, being calculated by the 
younger De Candolle, to be older than even the baobabs themselves. The living temple of the sa- 
cred banyan, and, indeed, many that to enumerate would far exceed the limits of a note. Pro- 
bably the largest tree now growing in Europe is the gigantic Spanish chestnut {castatiea vesca) on 
Mount Etna.— Ed- 
