MAESH AND FOREST PERIODS. 11 



stifled, it is said, had not Jolm Moody rescued 

 him ; whether this Moody was an ancestor of the 

 famous Whipper-in or not we cannot say. 



Evidence is not altogether wanting to show that 

 during the earlier history of the Marsh period, the 

 gigantic elk (Cervtcs giganteus), with his wide- 

 spreading antlers, visited, if he did not inhabit, the 

 flatter portions of the Willey country ; and it is 

 probable that the wild ox equally afibrded a mark 

 for the arrow of the ancient inhabitants of the dis- 

 trict in those remote times, which investigators 

 have distinguished as the Pile-building, the Stone, 

 and the Bronze periods, when society was in what 

 has been fittingly called the hunter- state. At any 

 rate, we know that at later periods the red deer, the 

 goat, and the boar, together with other " beasts," 

 were huntod, and that both banks of the Severn 

 resounded with the deep notes of " veteran hounds." 

 Of the two pursuits. Prior in his day remarks, 

 "Hawking comes near to himting, the one in the 

 ayre as the other on the earth, a sport as much 

 afiected as the other, by some preferred." That the 

 chase was the choice pastime of monarchs and nobles 

 before the Conquest, and the favourite sport of 

 "great and worthy personages" after, we learn 



