posite side is about seven hundred and four yards, and the breadth of the southwest end about four hundred and fifty-six yards. This measurement, which I caused to be made with good exactness, gives an area of about sixty-six acres, exclusive of a large irregular arm at the northeast corner, which we did not take into the reckoning.

On the face of this expanse of waters, and perfectly secure from fowlers, lie all day long, in the winter season, vast flocks of ducks, teals, and widgeons, of various denominations, where they preen, and solace and rest themselves till towards sunset, when they issue forth in little parties (for in their natural state they are all birds of the night) to feed in the brooks and meadows, returning again with the dawn of the morning. Had this lake an arm or two more, and were it planted round with thick covert (for now it is perfectly naked), it might make a valuable decoy.

Yet neither its extent, nor the clearness of its water, nor the resort of various and curious fowls, nor its picturesque groups of cattle, can render this mere so remarkable as the great quantity of coins that were found in its bed about forty years ago.*

* Old people remember to have heard their fathers and grandfathers say, that in dry summers and windy weather, pieces of money were sometimes found round the verge of Wolmer Pond; and tradition had inspired the foresters with a notion that the bottom of the lake contained great stores of treasure. During the spring and summer of 1740 there was little rain; and the following summer also, 1741, was so uncommonly dry, that many springs and ponds failed, and this lake in particular, whose bed became as dusty as the surrounding heaths and wastes. This favourable juncture induced some of the forest cottagers to begin a search, which was attended with such success that all the labourers in the neighbourhood flocked to the spot, and with spades and hoes turned up great part of that large area. Instead of pots

LETTER IX.

By way of supplement, I shall trouble you once more on this subject, to inform you that Wolmer, with her sister forest Ayles Holt, alias Alice Holt,* as it is called in old records, is held by grant from the crown for a term of years.

The grantees that the author remembers are, Brigadier-general Emanuel Scroope Howe and his lady Ruperta, who was a daughter of Prince Rupert; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pembroke; Henry Bilson Legge and lady; and now Lord Stawel, their son.

of coins, as they expected, they found great heaps, the one lying on the other as if shot out of a bag, many of which were in good preservation. Silver and gold these inquirers expected to find; but their discoveries consisted solely of many hundreds of Roman copper coins and some medallions, all of the lower empire. There was not much virtù stirring at that time in this neighbourhood; however, some of the gentry and clergy around bought what pleased them best, and some dozens fell to the share of the author.

The owners at first held their commodity at a high price; but, finding that they were not likely to meet with dealers at such a rate, they soon lowered their terms, and sold the fairest as they could. The coins that were rejected became current, and passed for farthings at the petty shops. Of those that we saw, the greater part were of Marcus Aurelius and the Empress Faustina his wife, the father and mother of Commodus. Some of Faustina were in high relief, and exhibited an agreeable set of features, which probably resembled that lady, who was more celebrated for her beauty than for her virtues. The medallions, in general, were of a paler colour than the coins.-WHITE's Antiquities of Selborne.

"In Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest. in Scaccar., 36 Ed. III., it is called Aisholt." In the same, "Tit. Wolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus Rex habet unam capellam in haia suâ de Kingesle." Haia, sepes, sepimentum, parcus: a Gall. haie and haye."-Spelman's Glossary.

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, bar

ren 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 are never seen within the limits of Wolmer: nor were the red deer of Wol. mer 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

* This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto.

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 imprisonment 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, as. sembling 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. 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.

D 2

LETTER X.

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.

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 boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts (hirundines apodes) among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead; but, on being carried towards the fire, revi. ved. He told me that, out of his great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.

Another intelligent person has informed me that, while he was a schoolboy at Brighthelmstone, in Sussex, a great fragment of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter on the beach, and that many people found swallows among the rubbish; but, on my questioning him whether he saw any of those birds himself, to my no small disappointment he answered me in the negative, but that others assu. red him they did.

Young broods of swallows began to appear this