28 WOLMER FOREST. RED DEER. 



Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap 

 in the Fauna Selborniensis, or " Natural History of S el- 

 borne ;" for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is 

 wanting, I mean the red-deer,* which, toward the begin- 

 ning 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 (men- 

 tioned 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 Liphock, 

 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.f 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 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 a huntsman, and six yeoman prickers, in scarlet 

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



a fine addition to our feathered game. The little American partridge, the 

 ortyx borealis of naturalists, has been introduced, and is now plentiful, in 

 some counties in England. W. J. 



* Red deer are still to be found in the New Forest, and Her Majesty's 

 buck-hounds are sent there every year to hunt them. One stag a few years 

 ago found near Lyndhurst was taken not far from Salisbury. ED. 



f The following curious fact may be mentioned with respect to red deer, 

 as proving their attachment to favourite localities. The late Duke of Atholl, 

 wishing to increase the stock of red deer in his park, took the opportunity of 

 a very severe winter to draw the deer from their hills and mountains. This 

 was done by scattering food in a line to the park, and a great extent of the 

 paling of it was removed. When hunger had thus compelled the deer to 

 enter it, toils were put up, the fencing was replaced and the deer enclosed. 

 They pined away, however, and in two years not one was left alive. ED. 



