The grantees that the author remembers, are,-BrigadierGeneral Emanuel Scroope 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.

*

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 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 and reduced by the night-hunters, who perpetually harass them,

* At Lord Stawel's death, the property reverted to Heneage Legge, Esq., afterwards to the Hon. Henry Legge and the Hon. and Rev. Augustus Legge, at whose death it was inherited by his eldest son.-ED.

+ Prince Rupert has long been the reputed inventor of mezzotinto, but it is proved on sufficient authority that he was merely the introducer of the art into this country. The invention was made in 1642, by a Dutchman named Ludwig von Siegen, who communicated it to Prince Rupert about the year 1654. See full particulars in Bohn's edition of Walpole's Anecdotes of Painters and Engravers, vol. iii. p. 23.-ED.

D 2

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. 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.

LETTER X.

TO THE SAME.

August 4, 1767. Ir 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.

There are now no deer in either Holt or Woolmer Forest.-ED.

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 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 he answered me in the negative; but that others assured him they did.

Young broods of swallows began to appear this year on July the 11th, and young martins (hirundines urbica) were then fledged in their nests. Both species will breed again once; for I see by my Fauna of last year, that young broods came forth so late as September the 18th.* Are not these

It will be seen in perusing this work that Mr. White constantly entertained the idea that swallows occasionally hybernated in this country, although he has failed in bringing forward any conclusive proof of the fact. We cannot but regret that that he was not acquainted with the following very interesting one, communicated to the editor by a lady of the highest respectability, who not only witnessed it herself, but it was also seen by several members of her own family. I will relate it in her own words:

"A pair of swallows built their nest early in the summer, close to the ironstay of a water-spout, running in the direction from my bed-room window. I could observe their proceedings as I lay in bed, and also from various parts of my room. After the first hatch had taken flight, the parent birds repaired the nest and sat again. The young ones were brought to life in September, and were able, early in October, to leave the nest for the spout or the roof of the house. They took a short flight across the court, but were too weak to depart when the rest of these birds are supposed to quit our Island. Having taken great interest in watching these little birds, I was led to wonder how the young ones would manage, or whether they would be left to starve. To my great surprise I found the old birds carrying mud one morning, and most carefully closing the aperture of the nest upon the young ones who were then

late hatchings more in favour of hiding than migration? Nay, some young martins remained in their nests last year so late as September the 29th; and yet they totally disappeared with us by the 5th of October.

How strange it is, that the swift, which seems to live exactly the same life with the swallow and house-martin, should leave us before the middle of August invariably! while the latter stay often till the middle of October; and once I saw numbers of house-martins on the 7th of November.* The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in sight together; an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds!

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 tops of tall woods. 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.

I perceive there are more than one species of the motacilla

in it. It was most effectually stopped. As the spring approached I diligently watched the little prisoners or rather their prison. Early in April I heard a slight twittering. This continued for some days, and I then inspected the nest and found a small hole about the size of a pea. This day by day increased, and at length three swallows emerged from their winter habitation. At first they appeared weak, but in a few days they gained strength, and after a flight always returned to the same place, and rested there during the night. The nest is still preserved. A brood has been hatched again this year, and another nest built on the next stay of the spout, nearer to my window."

It is curious that Mr. White and Mr. Daines Barrington, who were so strongly inclined in favour of the torpidity of swallows, should not have been able to bring forward one decided fact to prove their favourite idea.-ED.

*This may be accounted for by the swifts having only one brood and when they can fly, both old and young migrate. The purpose for which they came to this country has been fulfilled.-ED.

It is the grasshopper-lark.-ED.

Nothing can be more graceful or pretty than the action of this bird in taking flies. I have seen the young seated in a row on a rail, and fed by their parents in succession, darting at flies as mentioned by Mr. White.-ED.