THE NATURAL HISTORY 



[LETT. 



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, or black game. When I was a little boy I recol- 

 lect 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 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 

 grey heii. 



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 peram- 

 bulation taken in 1635), grandfather, father and self, enjoyed 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 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 sove- 

 reign ! 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 con- 

 tinued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumber- 

 land. About the year 1737, his highness sent down a hunts- 

 man, 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 to convey them in carts to Windsor. 

 In the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of 



