16 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
burrows, when they came to take away the deer they per- 
mitted the country people to destroy them all. 
Such forests and wastes, when their allurements to irregu- 
larities are removed, are of considerable service to neighbor- 
hoods that verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat 
and turf for their firing ; with fuel for the burning their lime; 
and with ashes for their grasses; and by maintaining their 
geese and their stock of young cattle at little or no expense. 
The manor farm of the parish of Greatham has an admitted 
claim, I see (by an old record taken from the Tower of London), 
of turning all live stock on the forest, at proper seasons (sheep 
excepted). The reason, I presume, why sheep? are excluded 
is because, being such close grazers, they would pick out all 
the finest grasses, and hinder the deer from thriving. 
Though (by statute 4 and 5 Wm. and Mary, c. 23) “to burn 
on any waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, 
ling, heath and furze, goss or fern, is punishable with whip- 
ping and confinement in the house of correction ”’; yet, in this 
forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the 
season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up, that they often get 
to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes 
been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, 
where great damage has ensued. ‘The plea for these burnings 
is, that when the old coat of heath, etc., is consumed, young 
will sprout up, and afford much tender browse for cattle; but 
where there is large old furze, the fire, following the roots, 
consumes the very ground; so that for hundreds of acres noth- 
ing is to be seen but smother and desolation, the whole cir- 
cuit round looking like the cinders of a volcano; and, the soil 
being quite exhausted, no traces of vegetation are to be found 
1 For this privilege the owners of that estate used to pay to the king 
annually seven bushels of oats. — W. 
2 In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up till 
lately, no sheep are admitted to this day. — W, 
