THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. ‘ 21 
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 detected, and rendered liable to the lash of the 
law. Neither fines nor imprisonments can deter them; so im- 
possible is it to extinguish the spirit of sporting which seems 
to be inherent in human nature. 
General Howe turned out some Getman wild boars and 
sows in his forests, to the great terror of the neighborhood, 
_and, at one time, a wild bull or buffalo; but the country rose 
upon them and destroyed them. 
A very large fall of timber, consisting 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 
Stawell. He lays claim also to the lop and top; but the poor 
of the parishes of Binsted and Frinsham, Bentley and Kingsley, 
assert that it belongs to them, and assembling in a riotous 
manner, have actually taken it all away. One man, who keeps 
a team, has carried home for his share forty sacks of wood. 
Forty-five of these people his lordship has served with actions. 
These trees, which were very sound and in high perfection, 
were winter-cut, viz., in February and March, before the bark 
would run. -In- old times the Holt was estimated to be 
eighteen miles, computed measure from water-carriage, viz., 
from the town of Chertsey, on the Thames; but now it is not 
half that distance, since the Wey is made navigable up to the 
town of Godalming in the county of Surrey. 
