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sportsman cried out, " A hen pheasant;" but a gentleman present, who had often seen black game in the north of England, assured me that it was a gray hen1.

Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the Fauna Selborniensis; for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is wanting, I mean the red deer, which toward the beginning of this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made a stately appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, named Adams, whose great grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation taken in 1635), grandfather, father, and self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer forest in succession for more than a hundred years. This person assures me, that his father has often told him that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Portsmouth road, did not think the forest of Wolmer beneath her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at Lippock, which is just by, and reposing herself on a bank smoothed for that purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer-pond, and still called Queen'sbank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction the whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight this, worthy the attention of the greatest sovereign! But he farther adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks, or, to use his own expression, as soon as they began blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so continued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumberland. It is now more than thirty years ago that his highness sent down a huntsman, and six yeomen-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with gold, attended by the stag-hounds; ordering them to take every deer in this forest alive, and to convey them in carts to Windsor. In the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of which showed extraordinary

Black game still occur on the forest; and a few of them are shot there almost every winter. On Bagshot Heath they yet remain; and even the red game has occasionally been met with.-E. T. B.

diversion: but, in the following winter, when the hinds were also carried off, such fine chases were exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeomen-prickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to any thing in Mr. Astley's riding-school. The exertions made by the horse and deer much exceeded all my expectations; though the former greatly excelled the latter in speed. When the devoted deer was separated from his companions, they gave him, by their watches, law, as they called it, for twenty minutes; when, sounding their horns, the stopdogs were permitted to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued.

LETTER VII.

TO THE SAME.

THOUGH large herds of deer do much harm to the neighbourhood, yet the injury to the morals of the people is of more moment than the loss of their crops. The temptation is irresistible; for most men are sportsmen by constitution: and there is such an inherent spirit for hunting in human nature, as scarce any inhibitions can restrain. Hence, towards the beginning of this century, all this country was wild about deerstealing. Unless he was a hunter, as they affected to call themselves, no young person was allowed to be possessed of manhood or gallantry. The Waltham blacks at length committed such enormities, that government was forced to interfere with that severe and sanguinary act called the black act', which now comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed before. And, therefore, a late Bishop of Winchester,

'Statute 9 Geo. I. c. 22.

when urged to restock Waltham-chase, refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate, replying that "It had done mischief enough already."

Our old race of deer stealers are hardly extinct yet: it was but a little while ago that, over their ale, they used to recount the exploits of their youth; such as watching the pregnant hind to her lair, and, when the calf was dropped, paring its feet with a penknife to the quick to prevent its escape, till it was large and fat enough to be killed; the shooting at one of their neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by moonshine, mistaking him for a deer; and the losing a dog in the following extraordinary manner:-Some fellows suspecting that a calf new-fallen was deposited in a certain spot of thick fern, went, with a lurcher, to surprise it; when the parent-hind rushed out of the brake, and, taking a vast spring with all her feet close together, pitched upon the neck of the dog, and broke it short in two.

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Another temptation to idleness and sporting was a number of rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and 2 This chase remains unstocked to this day: the Bishop was Dr. Hoadley.

dry places; but these being inconvenient to the huntsmen, on account of their burrows, when they came to take away the deer, they permitted the country people to destroy them all.

Such forests and wastes, when the allurements to irregularities are removed, are of considerable service to neighbourhoods 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, bidentibus exceptis3. 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 W. 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 whipping and confinement in the house of correction";" yet, in this forest, about March

* For this privilege the owner of that estate used to pay to the king annually seven bushels of oats.

* In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day.

* Sheep obtain the first pair of central permanent incisors when about fourteen months old, and are then occasionally referred to by the term bidentes.

It is singular that sheep with a single row of incisor teeth pressing against a cartilaginous pad, should be able to bite closer than a horse with a well matched double row of teeth; but it is a well known fact that a horse would be starved on downs where sheep thrive.-W. Y.

• In Scotland where the extensive burnings of heath are common, the prohibited months have reference to the preservation of the eggs and young of grouse and other game, as little other inconvenience is apt to ensue when no woods are in the vicinity. It is a very splendid spectacle to see, during a dark night, the skirts of a mountain range as far as the eye can reach, enveloped in one expanded sheet of fire and flame. Even in the daytime, the pale blue smoke of Muir-burn, as it is termed, is a very

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 &c. is consumed, young will sprout up, and afford much tender browze for cattle: but, where there is large old furze, the fire, following the roots, consumes the very ground; so that for hundreds of acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation, the whole circuit round looking like the cinders of a volcano; and, the soil being quite exhausted, no traces of vegetation are to be found for years. These conflagrations, as they take place usually with a north-east or east wind, much annoy this village with their smoke, and often alarm the country; and, once in particular, I remember that a gentleman, who lives beyond Andover, coming to my house, when he got on the downs between that town and Winchester, at twenty-five miles distance, was surprised much with smoke and a hot smell of fire; and concluded that Alresford was in flames; but, when he came to that town, he then had apprehensions for the next village, and so on to the end of his journey.

On two of the most conspicuous eminences of this forest stand two arbours or bowers, made of the boughs of oaks; the one called Waldon-lodge, the other Brimstone-lodge: these the keepers renew annually on the feast of St. Barnabas, taking the old materials for a perquisite. The farm called Blackmoor, in this parish,

fine sight, and gives a peculiar and indescribable aspect to the landscape. The process is productive in the succeeding summer, of an abundant crop of young shoots of heath and grass, upon which the sheep feast luxuriously.-RENNIE.

7 The description of the conflagration arising from the heath-fires here mentioned, reminds the scholar of the stubble-burning described in Virgil's Georgics, i. 84, and the commentary on the passage, by the elegant and learned Mr. Holdsworth, p. 52. Compare Virgilii Æn. ii. 304. Ovid. Epist. xv. 9. Sil. Ital. vii. 365.-MITFORD.

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