The grantees that the author remembers are BrigadierGeneral Emanuel Scroop Howe, and his lady, Ruperta, 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.1

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,2 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 were the

1 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 former open forest, were subsequently enclosed and planted. -ED.

2 This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto.-G. W. It would perhaps be more correct to say that he was the introducer only of this art into England. The invention it seems is due to Ludwig von Siegen, who about 1654 communicated the secret to Prince Rupert (cf. Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painters and Engravers," Bohn's edition, vol. iii p. 393).-ED.

red deer of Wolmer ever known to haunt the thickets or glades of The Holt.1

At present the deer of The Holt are much thinned 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

1 Mr. Bennett has pointed out that there could scarcely be two situations more dissimilar than The Holt and Wolmer Forest. 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.-ED.

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.1

A very large fall of timber, consisting of about 1,000 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 Binstead 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 sacks of wood. Forty-five of these people his lordship has served with actions.2 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."

1 Charles the First also turned out in the New Forest German boars and sows, which bred and increased. An engraving of one will be found in Gilpin's "Forest Scenery," vol. ii. p. 118.-ED.

2 Mr. Bennett ascertained 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 occasion of another fall of timber in The Holt, the people of Frinsham again assembled and carried off openly upwards of 6,000 faggots. So difficult is it to convince where interest opposes.-ED.

3 The formation of the Basingstoke Canal has again reduced the distance of The Holt from water-carriage; and it is now accessible, either at Odiham or at Bagman's Castle, within about seven miles.-ED.

LETTER X.

TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE.

August 4, 1767. T 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 apodes1) among the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, dead; but, on being carried toward the fire, revived. 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, ho answered me in the negative, but that others assured him they did.

Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the eleventh, and young martins (Hirundines urbica)

1 Cypselus apus of modern ornithologists.-ED.

D

were then fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again once; for I see by my Fauna of last year, that broods came forth so late as September the eighteenth. Are not these late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as September the twenty-ninth; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the fifth of October.

How strange is it that the swift, which seems to live exactly the same life as the swallow and house-martin, should leave us before the middle of August invariably!' while the latter stay often to the middle of October; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the seventh of November. The martins and redwing field fares were flying in sight together an uncommon assemblage of winter birds! 2

A little yellow bird (it is either a species of the Alauda trivialis, or rather perhaps of the Motacilla trochilus) still continues to make a sibilous shivering noise in the top of tall woods.3

The Stoparola of Ray (for which we have as yet no name in these parts) is called, in your Zoology, the flycatcher.* There is one circumstance characteristic of this bird, which seems to have escaped observation, and that is, it takes its stand on the top of some stake or post, from whence it springs forth on its prey, catching a fly in the air, and hardly ever touching the ground, but returning still to the same stand for many times together.

In quoting the above remark, under the head of Swift, in the second volume of his "British Zoology," 1768, p. 246, Pennant adds: "For these, and several other observations, we owe our acknowledgments to the Reverend Mr. White, of Selborne, Hampshire."-Ed.

2 An uncommon assemblage for the time of year, no doubt, though it would not have been so in the Spring; for at that season redwings and fieldfares frequently stay with us for a month after the swallows and martins have arrived.--ED.

3 By Alauda trivialis White intended the grasshopper warbler, as will be seen by referring to his list of summer birds, in the 16th Letter to Mr. Pennant. His Motacilla trochilus was the willow wren; but the "little yellow bird," which he compared with these, was no doubt the wood wren, Ph. sibilatrix, of modern naturalists.-ED.

The spotted flycatcher, Muscicapa grisola, of modern naturalists. -ED.