THE NEW FOREST. 57 



intimated, the provision contained in it for the semi-bar- 

 barous amusements of the chase. 



" The New Forest has always been celebrated for 

 its deer, both stag and fallow deer, with which it 

 once became so overstocked, that in the year 1787 

 upwards of three hundred of them are said to have 

 died in one ' walk ' alone. The right of deer-shooting 

 is now confined to the Lord Warden and those appointed 

 by him ; and the annual supply required by that officer is 

 sixty-four brace ; a few of which are sent to her majesty's 

 currier and the great officers of the crown, and the rest are 

 distributed amongst those persons to whom old customs 

 have assigned them. 



" The deer commit great depredations on the corn lands 

 of the borderers upon the New Forest. When these animals 

 have gotten a haunt of the corn-lands, the owners of them 

 are often obliged to burn fires all night for the purpose of 

 driving them away. 



"Several methods are practised by the poachers for 

 catching the deer : one common way is to bait a hook with 

 an apple, and hang it from the bough of a tree. 



"In the vicinity of Hounds' doon two posts have been 

 fixed at the distance of eighteen yards from each other, to 

 commemorate the leap of a stag, who, after receiving a 

 keeper's shot, collected its dying energies in a bound that 

 cleared that enormous space." 



In addition to those nimble denizens of the forest 

 these " native burghers of the wood " we have the horse, 

 returned almost to a state of nature. The Rev. W. Gilpin, 

 in his Forest Scenery, supposes that the peculiar breed of 

 half-wild horses with which this forest abounds are a race 

 descended from the Spanish jennets driven ashore on the 

 coast of Hampshire in the dispersion of the Spanish 

 Armada. 



" The New Forest horses are not bred for size, symmetry, 

 or any other particular character, but are left, as we may 

 say, to the general development of all the properties of the 



