NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 19 



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 red deer, which toward the beginning 

 of this century amounted to about five hundred head, and made a 

 stately appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, named 



THE BLACK GROUSE (Tetrao Tetrix). 



Adams, whose great grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation 

 taken in 1635), grandfather, father, and self, enjoyed the head 

 keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than a hun- 

 dred 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 Wolmer 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 purpose, 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 

 before her, consisting then of about five hundred head. A sight 

 this, worthy the attention of the greatest sovereign ! But he farther 



