foresters torrets, a corruption, I suppose, of turrets. Note. In the
beginning of the summer 1787 the royal forests of Wolmer and Holt were
measured by persons set down by government.
By a perambulation of Wolmer-forest and the Holt, made in 1635, and in
the eleventh year of Charles the First (which now lies before me), it
appears that the limits of the former are much circumscribed. For, to
say nothing on the farther side, with which I am not so well
acquainted, the bounds on this side, in old times, came into Binswood;
and extended to the ditch of Ward le Ham park, in which stands the
curious mount called King John’s Hill, and Lodge Hill; and to the verge
of Hartley Mauduit, called Mauduit-hatch; comprehending also
Short-heath, Oakhanger, and Oakwoods; a large district, now private
property, though once belonging to the royal domain.
It is remarkable that the term purlieu is never once mentioned in, this
long roll of parchment. It contains, besides the perambulation, a rough
estimate of the value of the timbers, which were considerable, growing
at that time in the district of the Halt; and enumerates the officers,
superior and inferior, of those joint forests, for the time being, and
their ostensible fees and perquisites. In those days, as at present,
there were hardly any trees in Wolmer-forest.
Within the present limits of the forest are three considerable lakes,
Hogmer, Cranmer, and Wolmer; all of which are stocked with carp, tench,
eels, and perch; but the fish do not thrive well, because the water is
hungry, and the bottoms are a naked sand.
A circumstance respecting these ponds, though by no means peculiar to
them, I cannot pass over in silence; and that is, that instinct by
which in summer all the kine, whether oxen, cows, calves, or heifers,
retire constantly to the water during the hotter hours; where, being
more exempt from flies, and inhaling the coolness of that element, some
belly deep, and some only to mid-leg, they ruminate and solace
themselves from about ten in the morning till four in the afternoon,
and then return to their feeding. During this great proportion of the
day they drop much dung, in which insects nestle; and so supply food
for the fish, which would be poorly subsisted but from this
contingency. Thus nature, who is a great economist, converts the
recreation of one animal to the support of another! Thomson, who was a
nice observer of natural occurrences, did not let this pleasing
circumstance escape him. He says, in his Summer:
A various group the herds and flocks compose:
… on the grassy bank
Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip
The circling surface.
Wolmer-Pond, so called, I suppose, for eminence sake, is a vast lake
for this part of the world, containing, in its whole circumference,
2,646 yards, or very near a mile and a half. The length of the
north-west and opposite side is about 704 yards, and the breadth of the
south-west end about 456 yards. This measurement, which I caused to be
made with good exactness, gives an area of about sixty-six acres,
exclusive of a large irregular arm at the north-east corner, which we
did not take into the reckoning.
On the face of this expanse of waters, and perfectly secure from
fowlers, lie all day long, in the winter season, vast flocks of ducks,
teals, and widgeons, of various denominations; where they preen and
solace, and rest themselves, till towards sunset, when they issue forth
in little parties (for in their natural state they are all birds of the
night) to feed in the brooks and meadows; returning again with the dawn
of the morning. Had this lake an arm or two more, and were it planted
round with thick covert (for now it is perfectly naked), it might make
a valuable decoy.
Yet neither its extent, nor the clearness of its water, nor the resort
of various and curious fowls, nor its picturesque groups of cattle, can
render this meer so remarkable as the great quantity of coins that were
found in its bed about forty years ago. But, as such discoveries more
properly belong to the antiquities of this place, I shall suppress all
particulars for the present, till I enter professedly on my series of
letters respecting the more remote history of this village and
district.
Letter IX
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
By way of supplement, I shall trouble you once more on this subject, to
inform you that Wolmer, with her sister forest Ayles Holt, alias Alice
Holt,* as it is called in old records, is held by grant from the crown
for a term of years.
* In ‘Rot. Inquisit. de statu forest. in Scaccar.,’ 36, Ed. 3, it is
called Aisholt. In the same, ‘Tit. Woolmer and Aisholt Hantisc. Dominus
Rex habet unam capellam in haia sua de Kingesle.’ ‘Haia, sepes,
sepimentum, parcus: a Gall. haie and haye.’—Spelman’s Glossary.
The grantees that the author remembers are Brigadier-General 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.
** This prince was the inventor of mezzotinto.
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 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 imprisonment 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 Thomas Pennant, Esquire
August 4, 1767.
It 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 rusticae) 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
eleventh, and young martins (hirundines urbicae) were then fledged in
their nests. Both species will breed again once. For I see by my Fauna
of last year, that young broods come 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 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
seventh of November. The martins and red-wing fieldfares were flying in
sight together; an uncommon assemblage of summer and winter birds.
A little 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 fly-catcher. There is one circumstance characteristic
of this bird, which seems to have escaped observation, and that is,
that 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 trochilus:
Mr. Derham supposes, in Ray’s Philos. Letters, that he has discovered
three. In these there is again an instance of some very common birds
that have as yet no English name.
Mr. Stillingfleet makes a question whether the black-cap (motacilla
atricapilla) be a bird of passage or not: I think there is no doubt of
it: for, in April, in the very first fine weather, they come trooping,
all at once, into these parts, but are never seen in the winter. They
are delicate songsters.
Numbers of snipes breed every summer in some moory ground on the verge
of this parish. It is very amusing to see the cock bird on wing at that
time, and to hear his piping and humming notes.
I have had no opportunity yet of procuring any of those mice which I
mentioned to you in town. The person that brought me the last says they
are plenty in harvest, at which time I will take care to get more; and
will endeavour to put the matter out of doubt, whether it be a
nondescript species or not.
I suspect much there may be two species of water-rats. Ray says, and
Linnaeus after him, that the water-rat is web-footed behind. Now I have
discovered a rat on the banks of our little stream that is not
web-footed, and yet is an excellent swimmer and diver: it answers
exactly to the mus amphibius of Linnaeus (see Syst. Nat.), which he
says ‘natat in fossis et urinator.’ I should be glad to procure one
‘plantis palmatis.’ Linnaeus seems to be in a puzzle about his mus
amphibius, and to doubt whether it differs from his mus terrestris;
which if it be, as he allows, the ‘mus agrestis capite grandi
brachyuros’ of Ray, is widely different from the water-rat, both in
size, make, and manner of life.
As to the falco, which I mentioned in town, I shall take the liberty to
send it down to you into Wales; presuming on your candour, that you
will excuse me if it should appear as familiar to you as it is strange
to me. Though mutilated ‘qualem dices.. . antehac fuisse, tales cum
sint religuiae!’
It haunted a marshy piece of ground in quest of wild-ducks and snipes:
but, when it was shot, had just knocked down a rook, which it was
tearing in pieces. I cannot make it answer to any of our English hawks;
neither could I find any like it at the curious exhibition of stuffed
birds in Spring-gardens. I found it nailed up at the end of a barn,
which is the countryman’s museum.
The parish I live in is a very abrupt, uneven country, full of hills
and woods, and therefore full of birds.
Letter XI
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, September 9, 1767.
It will not be without impatience, that I shall wait for your thoughts
with regard to the falco; as to its weight, breadth, etc., I wish I had
set them down at the time; but, to the best of my remembrance, it
weighed two pounds and eight ounces, and measured, from wing to wing,
thirty-eight inches. Its cere and feet were yellow, and the circle of
its eyelids bright yellow. As it had been killed some days, and the
eyes were sunk, I could make no good observation on the colour of the
pupils and the irides.
The most unusual birds I ever observed in these parts were a pair of
hoopoes (upupa) which came several years ago in the summer, and
frequented an ornamented piece of ground, which joins to my garden, for
some weeks. They used to march about in a stately manner, feeding in
the walks, many times in the day; and seemed disposed to breed in my
outlet; but were frightened and persecuted by idle boys, who would
never let them be at rest.
Three gross-beaks (loxia coccothraustes) appeared some years ago in my
fields, in the winter; one of which I shot: since that, now and then
one is occasionally seen in the same dead season.
A cross-bill (loxia curvirostra) was killed last year in this
neighbourhood.
Our streams, which are small, and rise only at the end of the village,
yield nothing but the bull’s head or miller’s thumb (gobius fluviatilis
capitatus), the trout (trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguilla), the
lampern (lampaetra parka et fluviatilis), and the stickle-back
(pisciculus aculeatus).
We are twenty miles from the sea, and almost as many from a great
river, and therefore see but little of sea-birds. As to wild fowls, we
have a few teams of ducks bred in the moors where the snipes breed; and
multitudes of widgeons and teals in hard weather frequent our lakes in
the forest.
Having some acquaintance with a tame brown owl, I find that it casts up
the fur of mice, and the feathers of birds in pellets, after the manner
of hawks: when full, like a dog, it hides what it cannot eat.
The young of the barn-owl are not easily raised, as they want a
constant supply of fresh mice: whereas the young of the brown owl will
eat indiscriminately all that is brought; snails, rats, kittens,
puppies, magpies, and any kind of carrion or offal.
The house-martins have eggs still, and squab young. The last swift I
observed was about the twenty-first of August; it was a straggler.
Red-starts, fly-catchers, white-throats, and reguli non cristati, still
appear; but I have seen no black-caps lately.
I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College
quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house-martin
flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the twentieth of
November.
At present I know only two species of bats, the common vespertilio
murinus and the vespertilio auritus.
I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take
flies out of a person’s hand. If you gave it anything to eat, it
brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding its head
in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The adroitness it showed
in shearing off the wings of the flies, which were always rejected, was
worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seem to be most
acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered: so that
the notion that bats go down chimneys and gnaw men’s bacon, seems no
improbable story. While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped,
I saw it several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down
on a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great
ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I was
aware of; but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner.
Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they
play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, not only for
the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are found over
them in the greatest plenty. As I was going, some years ago, pretty
late, in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a warm summer’s evening, I
think I saw myriads of bats between the two places: the air swarmed
with them all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at a
time.
I am, etc.
Letter XII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
November 4, 1767.
Sir,
It gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the falco* turned out an
uncommon one. I must confess I should have been better pleased to have
heard that I had sent you a bird that you had never seen before; but
that, I find, would be a difficult task.
* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus; a variety.
I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, a
young one and a female with young, both of which I have preserved in
brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no
doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller and
more slender than the mus domesticus medius of Ray; and have more of
the squirrel or dormouse colour: their belly is white, a straight line
along their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They
never enter into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the
sheaves; abound in harvest, and build their nests amidst the straws of
the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as
many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest composed of the
blades of grass or wheat.
One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted,
and composed of the blades of wheat; perfectly round, and about the
size of a cricket-ball; with the aperture so ingeniously closed, that
there was no discovering to what part it belonged. It was so compact
and well filled, that it would roll across the table without being
discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked and
blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her
litter respectively so as to administer a teat to each? perhaps she
opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the
business is over: but she could not possibly be contained herself in
the ball with her young, which moreover would be daily increasing in
bulk. This wonderful procreant cradle, an elegant instance of the
efforts of instinct, was found in a wheat-field, suspended in the head
of a thistle.
A gentleman, curious in birds, wrote me word that his servant had shot
one last January, in that severe weather, which he believed would
puzzle me. I called to see it this summer, not knowing what to expect:
but, the moment I took it in hand, I pronounced it the male garrulus
bohemicus or German silk-tail, from the five peculiar crimson tags or
points which it carries at the end of five of the short remiges. It
cannot, I suppose, with any propriety, be called an English bird: and
yet I see, by Ray’s Philosoph. Letters, that great flocks of them,
feeding upon haws, appeared in this kingdom in the winter of 1685.
The mention of haws put me in mind that there is a total failure of
that wild fruit, so conducive to the support of many of the winged
nation. For the same severe weather, late in the spring, which cut off
all the produce of the more tender and curious trees, destroyed also
that of the more hardy and common.
Some birds, haunting with the missal-thrushes, and feeding on the
berries of the yew-tree, which answered to the description of the
merula torquata, or ring-ousel, were lately seen in this neighbourhood.
I employed some people to procure me a specimen, but without success.
See Letter XX.
Query…..Might not canary birds be naturalized to this climate, provided
their eggs were put in the spring, into the nests of some of their
congeners, as goldfinches, greenfinches, etc. ? Before winter perhaps
they might be hardened, and able to shift for themselves.
About ten years ago I used to spend some weeks yearly at Sunbury, which
is one of those pleasant villages lying on the Thames, near
Hampton-court. In the autumn, I could not help being much amused with
those myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But
what struck me most was, that, from the time they began to congregate,
forsaking the chimneys and houses, they roosted every night in the
osier-beds of the aits of that river. Now this resorting towards that
element, at that season of the year, seems to give some countenance to
the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water.
A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded of that fact, that he talks,
in his calendar of Flora, as familiarly of the swallows going under
water in the beginning of September, as he would of his poultry going
to roost a little before sunset.
An observing gentleman in London writes me word that he saw a
house-martin, on the twenty-third of last October, flying in and out of
its nest in the Borough. And I myself, on the twenty-ninth of last
October (as I was travelling through Oxford), saw four or five swallows
hovering round and settling on the roof of the county-hospital.
Now is it likely that these poor little birds (which perhaps had not
been hatched but a few weeks) should, at that late season of the year,
and from so midland a county, attempt a voyage to Goree or Senegal,
almost as far as the equator?*
* See Adamson’s Voyage to Senegal.
I acquiesce entirely in your opinion—that, though most of the swallow
kind may migrate, yet that some do stay behind and hide with us during
the winter.
As to the short-winged soft-billed birds, which come trooping in such
numbers in the spring, I am at a loss even what to suspect about them.
I watched them narrowly this year, and saw them abound till about
Michaelmas, when they appeared no longer. Subsist they cannot openly
among us, and yet elude the eyes of the inquisitive: and, as to their
hiding, no man pretends to have found any of them in a torpid state in
the winter. But with regard to their migration, what difficulties
attend that supposition! that such feeble bad fliers (who the summer
long never flit but from hedge to hedge) should be able to traverse
vast seas and continents in order to enjoy milder seasons amidst the
regions of Africa!
Letter XIII
To Thomas Pennant, Esquire
Selborne, Jan. 22, 1768.
Sir,
As in one of your former letters you expressed the more satisfaction
from my correspondence on account of my living in the most southerly
county; so now I may return the compliment, and expect to have my
curiosity gratified by your living much more to the north.