place cannot be ascertained till a person has measured it for a very long period. I only know that Inch. Hund. From May 1, 1779, to the end of the year there fell 28 37! 27 32 30 71 33 71 38 80 31 55 39 57 From Jan. 1, 1782, to Jan. 1, 1783 From Jan. 1, 1783, to Jan. 1, 1784 The village of Selborne, and the large hamlet of Oakhanger, with the single farms, and many scattered houses along the verge of the forest, contain upwards of six hundred and seventy inhabitants.* We abound with poor; many of whom are sober and industrious, and live comfortably in good stone or brick cottages, which are glazed, and have chambers above stairs: mud buildings we have none. Besides the employment from husbandry, the men work in hop gardens, of which we have many; and fell and bark timber. In the spring and summer the women weed the corn; and enjoy a second harvest in September by hop-picking. Formerly, in the dead months they availed themselves greatly by spinning wool, for making of barragons, a genteel corded stuff, much in vogue at that time for summer wear; and chiefly manufactured at Alton, the neighbouring town, by some of the people called Quakers. The inhabitants enjoy a good share of health and longevity; and the parish swarms with children. *According to the population returns for 1861, Selborne, including the hamlets of Norton, Oakhanger, and Temple, contains 8506 statute acres, 217 inhabited houses, and 1118 inhabitants, 610 being males, and 508 females.-ED. HOULD I omit to describe with some exactness the Forest of Wolmer, of which three-fifths perhaps lie in this parish, my account of Selborne would be very imperfect, as it is a district abounding with many curious productions, both animal and vegetable; and has often afforded me much entertainment both as a sportsman and as a naturalist. The royal Forest of Wolmer is a tract of land of about seven miles in length, by two and a-half in breadth, running nearly from north north east, to south west, and is abutted on, to begin to the south, and so to proceed eastward, by the parishes of Greatham, Lysse, Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex; by Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists entirely of sand covered with heath and fern; but is somewhat diversified with hills and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees; though Dr. Plot says positively, that "there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the southern counties." But he was mistaken: for I myself have seen cottages on the verge of this wild district, whose timbers consisted of a black hard wood, looking like oak, which the owners assured me they procured from the bogs by probing the soil with spits, or some such instruments; but the peat is so much cut out, and the moors have been so well examined, that none has been found of late. Old people, however, have assured me, that on a winter's morning they have discovered these trees in the bogs by the hoar frost, which lay longer over the space where they were concealed, than on the surrounding morass. Nor does this seem to be a fanciful notion, but consistent with true philosophy. Besides the oak, I have also been shown pieces of fossil wood of a paler colour, and softer nature, which the inhabitants called fir: but, upon a nice examination, and trial by fire, I could discover nothing resinous in them; See his "Hist. of Staffordshire." †The explanation of this phenomenon is probably found in the fact that moist air is a rapid, and dry air a slow, conductor of heat; not a drop of water can be evaporated from the surface of the earth until it has been rendered buoyant by means of heat absorbed from the surrounding air. The facts stated by Dr. Hales, and quoted in all previous editions of this work, namely, "that a little snow having fallen on the night of the 29th of November, 1731, it was mostly melted away by eleven the next morning, except in several places in Bushy Park, where there were drains or elm pipes covered with earth, more than four feet deep, on which the snow continued to lie," are consistent with this explanation. The greater the evaporation at the earth's surface, in fact, the colder the surface becomes, and evaporation going on less rapidly in moist than in dry air, in undrained land than in that which is drained, the phenomenon here stated naturally resulted.-ED. and therefore rather suppose that they were parts of a willow or alder, or some such aquatic tree. This lonely domain is a very agreeable haunt for many sorts of wild fowls, which not only frequent it in the winter, but breed there in the summer; such as lapwings, snipes, wild-ducks, and, as I have discovered within these few years, teals. Partridges in vast plenty are bred in good seasons on the verge of this forest, into which they love to make excursions: and in particular, in the dry summer of 1740 and 1741, and some years after, they swarmed to such a degree, that parties of unreasonable sportsmen killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a day. But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, or black game. When I was a little boy I recollect one coming now and then to my father's table. The last pack remembered was killed about thirty-five years ago; and within these ten years one solitary grey hen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The 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 grey hen.* 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 • Black game, long extinct in the district, have again made their appearance in small numbers. Some imported birds having been turned out about Chobham have strayed to this wild district, and into the New Forest, and even as far as Dorset and Devonshire.-ED. 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 had 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's-bank, 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 *Waltham blacks were broken men, sometimes political refugees, at others professional robbers, and the off-scouring of society, who took to the forest, disguised themselves by blacking their faces, and committed all sorts of depredations: stealing the deer, robbing the warrens, cutting down trees, setting fire to houses, shooting at the person, and sending threatening letters with fictitious names, demanding money, of the neighbouring gentlemen. These depredations had attained such a pitch that the Black Act, 9 Geo. I. cap. 22, was passed, rendering all such acts, and a great many others, felony without benefit of clergy. The act was made perpetual by 31 Geo. II. cap. 42, but was virtually repealed by 16 Geo. III. c. 30, which substituted the milder punishment of a fine for a first offence, and fine and transportation for a second, for deer stealing.-ED. |