perta, who was a natural daughter of Prince Rupert by Margaret Hughs; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pembroke; Henry Bilson Legge and lady; and now Lord Stawel, their son.

The lady of General Howe lived to an advanced age, long surviving her husband; and, at her death, left behind her many curious pieces of mechanism of her father's constructing, who was a distinguished mechanic and artist', as well as warrior; and among the rest, a very complicated clock, lately in possession of Mr. Elmer, the celebrated game-painter at Farnham, in the county of Surrey.

Though these two forests are only parted by a narrow range of enclosures, yet no two soils can be more different for The Holt consists of a strong loam, of a miry nature, carrying a good turf, and abounding with oaks that grow to be large timber; while Wolmer is nothing but a hungry, sandy, barren waste.

The former, being all in the parish of Binsted, is about two miles in extent from north to south, and near as much from east to west; and contains within it many woodlands and lawns, and the great lodge where the grantees reside; and a smaller lodge called Goose Green; and is abutted on by the parishes of Kingsley, Frinsham, Farnham, and Bentley; all of which have right of common.

One thing is remarkable; that, though The Holt has been of old well stocked with fallow-deer, unrestrained by any pales or fences more than a common hedge, yet they were never seen within the limits of Wolmer; nor

2 On the expiration of the grant to Lord Stawel, the Commissioners of Woods and Forests resumed possession of The Holt. All the lands held by him, and two-thirds of the formerly open Forest, have been subsequently enclosed and planted, and now contain as fine young oaks as any plantations in the kingdom.-E. T. B.

This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto.

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

In the distinctness thus strongly stated to have existed between the ranges of the fallow deer and the red deer there is, at first sight, something so remarkable as to induce a consideration of the subject as regards the localities and the habits of the animals.

Than The Holt and Wolmer Forest it is almost impossible for two situations to be more dissimilar. The Holt is on the gault, and has all the richness of meadow and nobleness of oak wood that distinguish that formation. It consequently offered to the fallow deer, while they remained on it, plentiful grazing, abundance of browzing, and open and sheltered glades; advantages suited to the habits of that half domesticated race, introduced into this country by man, and still requiring at his hands care and protection. Wolmer Forest, on the lean and hungry sand, scarcely affords any grass, and has no high covert; and the red deer attached to it would have been limited for their provender almost exclusively to the lichens, the heath tops, and the twigs of the very few stunted bushes that occur here and there on its surface: retirement could only have been obtained for them by plunging into the unfrequented hollows interposed between its ridges. The more tender and exotic deer was placed, and it might have seemed almost naturally, in the richer and more sheltered forest of The Holt; the hardier and native race subsisted on the coarse fare of the dreary and cheerless waste of Wolmer. Of the two kinds, the one might have been regarded as approaching in some degree towards the sheep; while the other would more nearly have resembled, in its enduring habits, the rein-deer or the roe.

It is not, however, necessary to seek so far for the cause of the pertinacity with which the different deer adhered to their several ranges. Deer generally, without reference to the habits of particular species, are by no means given to wander from their accustomed haunts. A deer, almost from the moment at which it is born, becomes one of the herd to which its mother belongs, and remains with them, throughout the whole of its life, in the walks which they frequent. In the New Forest there are more than twelve distinct herds of fallow deer, each of which has its own range, and is under the charge of its especial keeper; and it scarcely ever happens that an individual from any of these herds quits its companions and mingles with those of another walk. Every one of the deer of each particular herd is so well known to its keeper as to be immediately missed by him, if it were to escape; and to be at once recognisable in the midst of another herd, had it associated with them. But even a solitary instance of wandering is almost unknown.

In this case the deer are all of one kind; for it is of the fallow deer only that I have been here speaking. The red deer now on the New Forest, amounting to about a hundred head, are not recognised as having distinct haunts from the fallow deer: the herds never mix together, it is

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 impossible is it to extinguish the spirit of sporting, which seems to be inherent in human nature.

General Howe turned out some German wild boars and sows in his forests, to the great terror of the neighbourhood; 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 Stawel. 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 stacks of wood. Forty-five of these people his lordship has served with actions 6. These trees, which were very

said; but the red deer do not avoid the places to which the others are accustomed to resort.

A most marked case of the adherence of deer to their respective walks obtains in the Forest of Dean. The Forest adjoins immediately to the High Meadow Woods, the property of Lord Gage, and in both of them fallow deer are kept. The deer of the Forest are all black: those of the High Meadow Woods are pale or spotted. A stray individual from either would be instantly recognised amid the herds of the other. But it never happens that either wanders from its own companions or quits its bounds. -E. T. B.

German boars and sows were also turned out by Charles the First in the New Forest, which bred and increased. Their stock is supposed to exist now, remarkable for the smallness of their hind quarters. See an Engraving of one in Gilpin's Forest Scenery, ii. 118.-MITFORD.

It appears that the defendants in these actions, though they made a show of resistance, suffered judgment to go by default. The question of right had, in fact, been tried in 1741, and determined against the claimants. Yet notwithstanding this, so soon after as 1788, on the occa

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 Surrey7.

LETTER X.

TO THE SAME1.

August 4, 1767.

IT has been my misfortune never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge; so that, for want of a companion to quicken my industry and sharpen my attention, I have made but slender progress in a kind of information to which I have been attached from my childhood.

sion of another fall of timber in The Holt, the people of Frinsham again assembled and carried off openly upwards of six thousand faggots. So difficult is it to convince where interest opposes.-E. T. B.

7 The formation of the Basingstoke Canal has again reduced the distance of The Holt from water-carriage; which is now accessible, either at Odiham or at Bagman's Castle, within about seven miles.E. T. B.

1 Pennant, the correspondent for many years of Gilbert White and the esteemed friend to whom the first series of his Letters on the Natural History of his native place were addressed, was among the most active of the scientific and literary characters of his day. At the time when the above Letter was written, the earliest in date of the published correspondence of White, he was busily engaged in the preparation of the octavo edition of his British Zoology: the first edition of that work had preceded it but a few years; and it was quickly followed by others; and by other works on zoology, and on antiquities, and by tours, topographies, and other productions; all of which were deservedly popular. For more than forty years his pen was never idle. Industrious himself, he was the cause also of industry in others; and the enumeration which he gives of the services he did to the professors of the art of engraving

As to swallows (Hirundines rustica) being found in a torpid state during the winter in the Isle of Wight, or any part of this country, I never heard any such account worth attending to. But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that, when he was a great

by the multitude of plates executed by them for his several works, while it furnishes a list of the principal of his productions, will also afford some idea of the extent and variety of his labours.

Of many of these works several editions were required, and the superintendence of them added to the demands on him for continual devotion to literary pursuits. Many minor works were also published by him, including numerous papers in the Philosophical Transactions. He maintained too an active correspondence both at home and abroad throughout the whole of his life; and numbered among his friends the most distinguished men in the several branches of knowledge which he cultivated. Linnæus was among his earliest correspondents; and with Pallas he was in frequent communication.

"I am often astonished," he says, in his Literary Life of himself, "at the multiplicity of my publications, especially when I reflect on the various duties it has fallen to my lot to discharge, as father of a family, landlord of a small but numerous tenantry, and a not inactive magistrate. I had a great share of health during the literary part of my days. Much of this was owing to the riding exercise of my extensive tours, to my manner of living, and to my temperance. I go to rest at ten; and rise winter and summer at seven, and shave regularly at the same hour, being a true misopogon. I avoid the meal of excess, a supper; and my soul rises with vigour to its employs, and (I trust) does not disappoint the end of its Creator."

Pennant died in 1798, in the seventy-third year of his age; having survived for more than seven years the literary death which he had anticipated for himself in 1791.-E. T. B.