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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 g