CHAPTER V 



THE NEW FOREST HUNT 



The New Forest is perhaps as good an example 

 as Gould be wished of old EngUsh scenery, and 

 after about eight hundred years it still remains 

 the New Forest. Its boundaries may be smaller, 

 but the main features are the same as in the days 

 of William Ruf us, and the names of the old woods, 

 streams and plains still remain; moreover, it is 

 almost the last of the old forests which England 

 could boast of in former times. 



What strikes most people when they first 

 come to the New Forest is, that amidst all the 

 changes which are going forward in these modern 

 days, here, at least, is one place which is but 

 little altered, and this perhaps is its greatest 

 charm. 



In former times there were many red 

 deer in the Forest, and an old tradition has 

 been handed down that the Royal Buckhounds 

 came down to hunt them so far back as the 

 month of August 1763. It seems certain that 

 in the forties and fifties of the last century the 



Queen's Buckhounds came for several years in 



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