28 The Natural History of Selborne 



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 succession 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 * 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 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, 2 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 High- 

 ness 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 diversion : but in the following 

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

 exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder 

 for years afterwards. I saw myself one of the yeoman-prickers 

 single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it was the 

 most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to anything in 



1 The Portsmouth Road. ED. 2 A body of local deer-stealers or poachers, 

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



