288 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN. 



directed the method of turf-cutting, rushes, &c. As 

 a general law, the poor in the vicinity could only 

 take what they could get as to wood, " by hook or by 

 crook ; " they were allowed to cut no wood, whence has 

 arisen the now common adage. Deer are very delicate 

 feeders, and though the cattle, even under certain re- 

 strictions, used to eat them out of their sweet grass 

 on the lawns, the deer did no harm to the coarser 

 grazing of the cattle, for they would rather starve 

 than eat the rougher herbage on which the cattle 

 feed. I said a good deal of this in the House 

 of Commons in defence of the deer and of the poor, 

 but my good friend Mr. Hume for once deserted the 

 public cause, and he, with a host of others, sided 

 against me. I remember his dwellino; much on the 

 " dangerous power the Crown had, in these civilised 

 days, to turn out and keep to an unlimited extent, so 

 as to eat up all the pasturage from cattle, not only 

 any amount of deer, but absolutely all and every 

 luild beast of chase." " Conceive," he added, " wild 

 beasts ! even wild beasts in this country." These, if 

 not the exact words, were precisely the burdens ofi> 

 my friend's song ; he having evidently got the idea 

 into his head, that her Majesty and the Prince Consort 

 could, if they pleased, at any time so to divert the 

 young princes, and give them such manly recreation, 

 enlarge the contents of tlie menageries at the Tower, 

 lions, tigers, leopards, wolves, hyaenas, elephants, and 

 rhinoceroses among the liege subjects of the New 

 Forest ; and turn it, in fact, into a private zoological 

 or bear garden. All I could say or do was of no use, 

 and the bill passed. Now let us see in what way the 

 poor have been benefited, or who it is that has gone 

 to the wall. I will take my reader a walk in the forest 



