OF SELBORNE 17 



But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, 

 now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded 

 much before shooting flying became so common, and that 

 was the heath-cock, black game, or grouse. 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 grey hen was sprung by some beagles in beating 

 for a hare. The sportsmen cried out, " A hen pheasant " ; 

 but a gentleman present, who had often seen grouse in the 

 north of England, assured me that it was a grey 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 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 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 an 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 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 further adds that, by means of the Waltham blacks, or, 

 to use his own expression, as soon as they began blacking, 

 they were reduced to about fifty head, and so continued 

 decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumberland. 

 It is now more than thirty years ago that his highness sent 

 down an huntsman, and six yeomen-prickers, in scarlet 

 jackets laced with gold, attended by the stag-hounds ; 

 ordering them to take every deer in this forest alive, and 



