I04 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



Those who know Exmoor will recognise these signs in 

 a moment ; it is a fraying-post where the stags rubbed 

 the velvet from their horns last summer. There arc 

 herds of red deer in the park. At one time there were 

 said to be almost as many as run free and wild over the 

 expanse of Exmoor. They mark the trees very much, 

 especially those with the softer bark. Wire fencing has 

 been put round many of the hollies to protect them. A 

 stag occasionally leaps the boundary and forages among 

 the farmers' corn, or visits a garden, and then the owner 

 can form some idea of what must have been the diffi- 

 culties of agriculture in mediaeval days. Deer more 

 than double the interest of a park. A park without 

 deer is like a wall without pictures. However wel 

 proportioned the room, something is lacking if the walls 

 be blank. However noble the oaks and wide the sweep 

 of sward, there is something wanting if antlers do not 

 rise above the fern. The pictures that the deer make 

 are moving and alive ; they dissolve and re-form in a 

 distant frame of tree and brake. Lately the herd has 

 been somewhat thinned, having become too numerous. 

 One slope is bare of grass, a patch of yellow sand, which 

 if looked at intently from a distance seems presently to 

 be all alive like mites in cheese, so thick are the rabbits 

 in the warren. Under a little house, as it were, built 

 over a stream is a chalybeate fountain with virtues like 

 those of Tunbridge Wells. 



The park is open to visitors — here comes a gay four- 

 in-hand heavily loaded sweeping by on its road to that 

 summer town. There is much ironstone in the soil 

 round about. At the edge of the park stands an old 

 farmhouse of timber and red tile, with red oast-house 

 beside it, built with those gables which our ancestors 

 •seemed to think made such excellent rooms within. 



