28 The Natural History of Selborne 



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 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 x at Lippock [Liphook], 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 satis- 

 faction 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, 2 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 Cumberland. 

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

 down an huntsman, and six yeoman-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 which showed extraordinary diver- 



1 The Portsmouth Road. ED. s A body of local deer-stealers or 



poachers, for details as to whom, see the next letter. ED. 



