(* 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
heath, etc., is consumed, young will sprout up, and afford much
tender browse for cattle; but, where there is large old fume, the
fire, following the roots, consumes the very ground; so that for
hundreds of acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation,
the whole circuit round looking like the cinders of a volcano; and
the soil being quite exhausted, no traces of vegetation are to be
found for years.
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