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; 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, black game, or grouse. 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 sportsmen cried out, "A hen pheasant;" but a gentleman present, who had often seen grouse in the north of England, assured me that it was a grey hen.*

more than four feet depth of earth over it. It continued also to lie on thatch, tiles, and the tops of wails." See Hales's Hæmastatics, p. 360. Quere, Might not such observations be reduced to domestic use, by promoting the discovery of old obliterated drains and wells about houses; and in Roman stations and camps lead to the finding of pavements baths, and graves, and other hidden relics of curious antiquity?

This fine species, the tetrao tetrix or black grouse, inhabits every where less elevated situations than the other British species which by sportsmen are termed grouse, being found, though at present nowhere very plentifully, in the south of England, wherever there are heathy wilds of sufficient extent, intermingled here and there with coppice, or brushwood, and patches of boggy ground. They occur sparingly upon the Devonshire moors and other heathy districts in the western counties, also, rather more abundantly, in the New-forest, Hants., and now and then a solitary individual may be flushed on the extensive moorland range of Hounslow and Bagshots but their principal localities lie more to the north, upon the lower slopes of heathy and mountainous regions, which are covered with a natural growth of willow, birch, and alder, and intersected by morasses, clothed with coarse herbage, also the deep and wooded dells which so com monly occur in the valleys between the mountains. They subsist (all the poultry tribes being nearly omnivorous) on various kinds of food, according to the season, as insects, the different

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 towards the beginning of this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made

Red Deer.

wild berries, and the seeds of various rushes and other plants, but chiefly on the young and tender shoots of the heath; and, in winter, when these are no longer procurable, up the bud and tops of the birch and wild alder, and the embryo shoots of the different firs. These they can readily obtain, as unlike the ptarmigan (lagopus), to which genus the red grouse of sportsmen belongs, they are capable of perching upon trees, and always retire to roost at night, like pheasants, on a horizontal bough. They frequently descend, too, in the vicinity of cultivation, te peck some grain in the cornfields. The black grouse also differs from the red, and the other members of the genus lagopus, in being a polygamous bird, as indeed are all those which now range in tetrao. The latter considerably resemble, in their manners, the common domestic poultry, and the males of them spread the tail, and strut, and drop their wings in the style of the turkey and pea-fowl, a habit which is observed in no species of the ptarmigan genus, nor in any monogamous kind with which I am acquainted, but which is curiously noticeable in the cow-bunting of Wilson's "American Ornithology," the only known member of the extensive natural family to which it belongs which is not so. Most polygamous birds are indeed provided, at least in the breeding season, with some kind of curious display, and this is remarkably exemplified in the case of the ruff (machetes variabilis), the only known species of its numerous tribe which does not pair, and also the only one which is adorned in spring with a singular mass of produced feathers about the head and neck. The true grouse hybridize very readily in confinement with

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 stil 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 further 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 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 won

the pheasants and allied genera; and, even in the wild state, mule specimens have several times been met with between the male pheasant and the female black grouse. There is reason, however, to believe that these crossings only take place in localities where the male black grouse have been destroyed. They are interesting, as indicative of the close affinity between the genera tetrao and phasianus, and they sufficiently attest the absurdity of classifying these, as some have done, as the types of two separate and distinct families. The males of most polygamous birds are very careless about the welfare of their progeny, but this is not the case with the black grouse; for, when his females are sttting, and while his numerous brood continue young and helpless, he acts as sentinel and keeps watch over the safety of them all. The young begin to throw out the mature plumage some time before they are quite full grown, and the males then separate from the rest and associate in small flocks or packs, continuing thus together till the influence of the vernal season prompts them to disperse over the wilds, at which time, as might be expected, very desperate battles continually take place among them. It will be observed that in these habits, which are common to all the genuine tetraones, and certain allied genera, a curious and highly interesting analogy may be traced with particular groups of ruminant mammifers, an analogy which I believe has never heretofore been remarked.-ED.

*These noble and majestic animals, the red deer or stag (cervus elephas), a species truly indigenous to the country (as its fossil remains abundantly show), are now comparatively very few in any part of England; but the case is different in the mountainous regions of North Britain, where, especially on the duke of Athol's vast estates, in the central Grampians, immense herds of them still roam uurestrained, the splendid and appropriate ornaments of that wild and rugged country. In the south of England they can only be considered as park animals.-ED.

der for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeomenprickers 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 stop-dogs were permitted to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued.

LETTER VII. To T. PENNANT, Esq.

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 deer-stealing. 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, when urged to re-stock 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 and the losing a dog in the following extraordinary man.

deer;

Statute 9 Geo. I. c. 22.

This chase remains unstocked to this day; the bishop was Dr. Hoadly.

ner-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.

Another temptation to idleness and

sporting was a number of rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and 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.

Rabbit.

Such forests and wastes, when their 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 of 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 exceptis.* The reason, I presume, why sheept 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 whipping 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, &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 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 failow-deer has been kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day

C