The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 | Page 6

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, a neighbouring town, by some of the people
called Quakers; but from circumstances this trade is at an end. The
inhabitants enjoy a good share of health and longevity; and the parish
swarms with children.

LETTER VI.
Should 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 to south,
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, Hadleigh, 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.
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 summers 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 greyhen
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 greyhen.
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 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 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