The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 | Page 9

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 mere 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.
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.
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 Hughes; a Mr. Mordaunt, of the
Peterborough family, who married a dowager Lady Pembroke; Henry
Bilson Legge and lady; and now Lord Stawell, 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 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