when they came to take away the deer, they permitted the country
people to destroy them all.

Such forests and wastes, when their allurements to irregularities
are removed, are of considerable service to neighbourhoods that
verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat and turf for their
firing; with fuel for the burning their lime; and with ashes for their
grasses; and by maintaining their geese and their stock of young
cattle at little or no expense.

The manor farm of the parish of Greatham has an admitted claim, I
see (by an old record taken from the Tower of London), of turning
all live stock on the forest at proper seasons, bidentibus exceptis.*
The reason, I presume, why sheep** are excluded, is, because,
being such close grazers, they would pick out all the finest grasses,
and hinder the deer from thriving.
(* For the privilege the owner of that estate used to pay to the king
annually seven bushels of oats.)
(** In the Holt, where a fun stock of fallow-deer has been kept up
till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day.)

Though (by statute 4 and 5 W. and Mary, c. 23) 'to burn on any
waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath
and furze, goss or fern, is punishable with whipping and
confinement in the house of correction'; yet, in this forest, about
March or April, according to the dryness of the season, such vast
heath-fires are lighted up, that they often get to a masterless head,
and, catching the hedges, have sometimes been communicated to
the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great damage has
ensued. The plea for these burnings is, that, when the old coat of