28 NATURAL HISTORY 



sportsman cried out, " A hen pheasant ;" but a gentle- 

 man present, who had often seen black game in the 

 north of England, assured me that it was a gray hen 4 . 



Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only 

 gap in the Fauna Selborniensis ; for another beautiful 

 link in the chain of beings is wanting, I mean the red 

 deer, which toward the beginning of this century 

 amounted to about five hundred head, and made a 

 stately appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, 

 named Adams, whose great grandfather (mentioned in 

 a perambulation taken in 1635), grandfather, father, and 

 self, enjoyed the head keepership of Wolmer forest in 

 succession for more than a hundred years. This person 

 assures me, that his father has often told him that 

 Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the Portsmouth 

 road, did not think the forest of Wolmer beneath her 

 royal regard. For she came out of the great road at 

 Lippock, which is just by, and reposing herself on a 

 bank smoothed for that purpose, lying about half a mile 

 to the east of Wolmer-pond, and still called Queen's- 

 bank, saw with great complacency and satisfaction the 

 whole herd of red deer brought by the keepers along the 

 vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred 

 head. A sight this, worthy the attention of the greatest 

 sovereign ! But he farther adds that, by means of the 

 Waltham blacks, or, to use his own expression, as soon 

 as they began blacking, they were reduced to about fifty 

 head, and so continued decreasing till the time of the 

 late Duke of Cumberland. It is now more than thirty 

 years ago that his highness sent down a huntsman, and 

 six yeomen-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with gold, 

 attended by the stag-hounds; ordering them to take 

 every deer in this forest alive, and to convey them in 

 carts to Windsor. In the course of the summer they 

 caught every stag, some of which showed extraordinary 



4 Black game still occur on the forest; and a few of them are shot 

 there almost every winter. On Bagshot Heath they yet remain ; and 

 even the red game has occasionally been met with. E. T. B. 



