CHASE OF WILD DEER IN ENGLAND 139 



and by that sheet - anchor of deer-hunting, Mr 

 Gerald Lascelles. 



The New Forest, from a deer -hunting point of 

 view, may be described as an expanse of woodland, 

 moor, and marsh, some nine miles in diameter, and 

 dotted with enclosures " within fence for growth 

 of timber," and, much more rarely, with occasional 

 hamlets and tracts of cultivated land. The railway 

 bounds the eastward range of the deer, and they 

 rarely go as far west as the Christchurch Avon. 



Three kinds of deer inhabit this area — the native 

 British red -deer and roe -deer, and the introduced 

 fallow-deer, if it is not pedantic to speak so of an 

 animal which arrived in our country before the 

 Christian religion. The roe - deer is not now often 

 hunted in England, though during the last century 

 they afforded great sport in Dorsetshire ; and though 

 to kill a stag is generally the great ambition of 

 masters of the New Forest pack, there are so few 

 red-deer in the district that it is an ambition but 

 rarely realised. Fallow-deer are the usual objects 

 of chase here, for which reason this pack, alone in 

 England, are know^n as " deer-hounds." As a matter 

 of breed they are simply fox-hounds, as indeed all 

 English so-called "stag-hounds" are. 



In its present form the hunt has a history of some 

 sixty years, during the earlier half of which it was a 

 scratch affair. As a rule the deer-hounds hunt one 

 day a-week in the upper and one in the lower part 

 of their country. The latter has the advantage, in 

 my opinion, of carrying a better scent, but it consists 

 mostly of woodland, intersected with deep, holding 

 rides ; whereas in the upper country the enclosures 

 generally lie farther apart, and are divided by wide 



