12 
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
called Quakers : but from circumstances this trade is at an end.* 
The inhabitants enjoy a good share of health and longevity; and 
the parish swarms with children. 
LETTER VI. To T. PENNANT, Esq. 
Should I omit to describe with some exactness the forest of 
Wolmer, of which three-fifths perhaps lie in this parish, my ac- 
count of Selborne would be very imperfect, as it is a district 
abounding with many curious productions, both animal and ve- 
getable, and has often afforded me much entertainment both as 
a sportsman and as a naturahst. 
The royal forest of Wolmer is a tract of land of about seven 
miles in length, by two and a half in breadth, running nearly 
from north to south, and is abutted on, to begin to the south, 
and so to proceed eastward, by the parishes of Greatham, Lysse, 
Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex, by Bramshot, 
Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists entirely of sand 
covered with, heath and fern ; but is somewhat diversified with 
hills and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole 
extent. In the bottoms, v/here the waters stagnate, are many 
bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees ; though 
Dr. Plot says positively,t that " there never were any fallen trees 
hidden in the mosses of the southern counties." But he was 
mistaken ; for I myself have seen cottages on the verge of this 
wild 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 in- 
struments ; but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have 
been so well examined, that none has been found of late.t 
* Since the passage above was written, I am happy in being able to say^that the spinning 
employment is a little revived, to the no small comfort of the industrious housewife, 
t See his Hist, of Staffordshire. 
t Old 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 were concealed than on 
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 
