302 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



hay. They are, in fact, foddered exactly the same 

 as cattle. In some of the smaller parks they are driven 

 into inclosures and fed altogether. This is not the case 

 here. Perhaps it was through the foggers, as the labourers 

 are called who fodder cattle and carry out the hay in the 

 morning and evening, that deer poachers of old discovered 

 that they could approach the deer by carrying a bundle 

 of sweet-smelling hay, which overcame the scent of the 

 body and baffled the buck's keen nostrils till the thief was 

 within shot. The foggers, being about so very early in 

 the morning, — they are out at the dawn, — have found out 

 a good many game secrets in their time. If the deer 

 were outside the forest at any hour it was sure to be 

 when the dew was on the grass, and thus they noticed 

 that with the hay truss on their heads they could walk 

 up quite close occasionally. Foggers know all the game 

 on the places where they work ; there is not a hare or a 

 rabbit, a pheasant or a partridge, whose ways are not 

 plain to them. There are no stories now of stags a 

 century old (three would go back to Queen Elizabeth) ; 

 they have gone, like other traditions of the forest, before 

 steam and breechloader. Deer lore is all but extinct, 

 the terms of venery known but to a few ; few, indeed, 

 could correctly name the parts of a buck if one were 

 sent them. The deer are a picture only — a picture that 

 lives and moves and is beautiful to look at, but must 

 not be rudely handled. Still, they linger while the 

 marten has disappeared, the polecat is practically gone, 

 and the badger becoming rare. It is curious that the 

 badger has lived on through sufferance for three cen- 

 turies. Nearly three centuries ago, a chronicler ob- 

 served that the badger would have been rooted out 

 before his time had it not been for the parks. There 

 was no great store of badgers then ; there is no great 



