inguish 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 Stawell. 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.

_August 4th_, 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 towards 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 clif