30 NATURAL HISTORY 
Game. 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 gray 
hen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a 
hare. The sportsman cried out, “A hen pheasant !” 
but a gentleman present, who had often seen black 
game in the north of England, assured me that it 
was a gray hen. 
Nor does the loss of our black game prove the 
only gap in the Fauna Selborniensis, for another 
beautiful link in the chain of beings is wanting: I 
mean the Rep Degr, which, towards the beginning 
of this century, amounted to about five hundred 
head, and made a stately appearance. There is 
an old keeper now alive, named Adams, whose 
great-grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation 
taken in 1635), grandfather, father, and self en- 
joyed the head-keepership of Wolmer Forest in 
succession for more than a hundred years. This 
person assures me that his father has often told him 
that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the 
Portsmouth road, did not think the forest of Wol- 
mer beneath her royal regard. For she came out 
of the great road at Lippock, which is just by, and, 
reposing herself on a bank smoothed for that pur- 
pose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer 
Pond, and still called Queen’s Bank, saw with great 
complacency and satisfaction the whole herd of 
red deer brought by the keepers along the vale be- 
fore her, consisting then of about five hundred 
head. A sight, this, worthy the attention of the 
greatest sovereign! But he farther adds, that, by 
means of the Waltham blacks, or, to use his own 
