i6 
NATURAL HISTORY 
fir: but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could dif- 
cover nothing refinous in them; and therefore rather fuppofe that 
they were parts of a willow or alder, or feme fuch aquatic tree. 
This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many forts of 
wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed 
there in the fummer; fuch as lapwings, fnipes, wild-ducks, and, 
as I have difcovered within thefe few years, teals. Partridges in vaft 
plenty are bred in good feafons on the verge of this foreft, into 
which they love to make excurfions : and in particular, in the dry 
fummer of 1740 and 1741, and fome years after, they fwarrned to 
fuch a degree that parties of unreafonable fportfnien killed twenty 
and fometimes thirty brace in a day. 
But there was a nobler fpecies of game in this foreft, now ex- 
tinct, which I have heard old people fay abounded much before 
fliooting flying became fo common, and that was the heath-cock, 
hlack game, or groufe. When 1 was a little boy I recoiled one 
coming now and then to my father's table. The laft pack remem- 
bered was killed about thirty-five years ago; and within thefe ten 
years one folitary grey hen was fprung by fome beagles in beating 
for a hare. The fportfmen cried out, " A hen pheafant;" but a 
gentleman prefent, who had often feen groufe in the North of Eng- 
land, afijjred me that it was a greyhen. 
Nor does the lofs of our black game prove the only gap in the 
Fauna Selbornienfis ; for another beautiful link in the chain of beings 
" earth from afcending from greater depths below them : for the fnow lay where the drain 
" had more than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued alfo to lie on tliatch, tiles, 
" and the tops of walls." See Haks^s Hsemallatics : p. 360. Quere, Might not fuch 
obfervations be reduced to domellic ufe, by promoting the difcovery of ©Id obliterated 
drains and wells about houfes ; and in Roman ftations and camps lead to the finding of 
pavements, baths and graves, and other hidden relics of curious antiquity ? 
is 
