THE MUSK OX. 



"The king went this evening to lie at Lord Arundel's in 

 Highgate that he may be nearer and readier to hunt the stag 

 on the morrow in St. John's Wood." 



Sir Dudley Carleton on James I. 



Few chronicles are more interesting than the 

 history of our own country ; these records of 

 bygone times reveal a state of things strange 

 indeed to the reader of to-day. Charing Cross, 

 a monument erected by royal Edward in memory 

 of his queen ; later, the name of a village 

 outside London, situated near the hamlets of 

 Kensington and Westminster ; Temple Gardens, 

 where Plantagenet plucked the white rose and 

 Somerset the red ; Hyde Park, the former 

 hunting ground of Edward VI.; Tottenham, in 

 whose brooks Izaak Walton used to angle, once had 

 associations different indeed from those now attached 

 to them. It seems strange to read that as late as 

 1 034 Regent's Park abounded with hares, which 

 used to eat the plants and flowers in the Zoological 

 Gardens ; while about this date, Lord Malmesbury 

 recorded that he shot pheasants in the same park. 

 Could one, however, have beheld Britain in the 

 Glacial Epoch, strange indeed would the country 

 have appeared, overrun with giant beasts and 

 savage men. 



