Another temptation to idleness and sporting was a number of
rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and dry places: but these
being inconvenient to the huntsmen, on account of their burrows,
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.
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