276 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



if Lord Carlisle will refer, if lie has not destroyed it, 

 to a correspondence of mine, he will see that I re- 

 ported the existing state of things to hira. Of all 

 the English forests, from the nature of the soil, ab- 

 sence of mineral productions, and scantiness of popu- 

 lation, the New Forest was the one that had the best 

 rjo-ht to have continued as an ornamental appendage 

 to the CroAvn, and as a site for the young princes to 

 have followed the healthful recreation of hunting and 

 shooting. 



It is in the New Forest that the Queen's stag- 

 hounds should have been kept as fox-hounds ; and I 

 maintain that such an establishment as the present 

 ] ack of stag-hounds is, from the increase of popu- 

 lation, railways, &c., out of place at Windsor ; and 

 that it is unseemly for the subjects to threaten the 

 Crown servants with actions, and to pelt them with 

 pitchforks, when by chance, as at present, they run 

 over the Harrow country. The people farming the 

 greater portion of the lands over which the Royal 

 Hunt passes now, if they thought it would avail them, 

 would petition for the non-existence of the hounds, 

 while every soul, from the gentleman and farmer 

 down to the poorest cottager resident in that part 

 of Hampshire, would memorialise the Crown to 

 bring the establishment to the New Forest. I speak 

 advisedly, and from observation as well as communi- 

 cation with others ; and I believe, though I state it 

 not on authority, that Lord Derby's Government en- 

 tertained some such idea in regard to the pro^Der site 

 for the Royal Hunt. The New Forest is upwards of 

 sixty thousand acres of wild heath, swamp, and wood. 

 Foxes can be more easily preserved there without 

 detriment to the farmer's hen-roosts than in other 



