16 WHITE 



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 greyhen 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 greyhen. 



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 succes- 

 sion 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 for- 

 est 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 

 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 staghounds ; 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 which 

 showed extraordinary diversion : but in the following winter, 

 when the hinds were also carried off, such fine chases were 



