4i6 The Book of the Horse. 



" Not a moment to lose if you'd share in the fun ; 

 Of a gate, or a gap, not a sign to be seen ! 

 Ere the dancers are ready the music's begun. 



To the tune, if you like it, of 'Wearing the Green." 

 For a horse may be grassed and his rider be floored 

 In a couple of shakes, when they start with the ' Ward.' " 



WILD STAG HUNTING. 



" On the hills and moors of Devonshire and Somersetshire, bounded by the Bristol Channel 

 on one side, and on the other by the enclosed and cultivated farms, a limited stock of ' red- 

 deer retain a doubtful hold upon Exmoor, and the hills, wastes, and modern plantations around it,' 

 preserved by the exertions and at the expense of Earls Fortescue, Carnarvon, and Lovelace, Sir 

 Thomas Ackland, Colonel Knight, M.P. (the owner of 2 1, OOO acres of Exmoor), and other land- 

 owners, and by the hearty assistance of the hill farmers, with whom to kill a wild deer, except 

 before the hounds, would be as great a crime as to shoot a fox on Lincolnshire Wolds. 



" Exmoor was afforested by William Rufus, and in those old days the red-deer, the 

 chosen game of Norman kings, roamed in large herds over this remote and thinly inhabited 

 district, attracted by (what still remains) the excellence of the summer pasture and the wild- 

 ness of valleys no longer oak-clad. When Exmoor was disforested by Act of Parliament in 

 l8i8, it comprised, with the unenclosed lands lying open, 60,000 acres without a fence- 

 Over these wastes there were no roads for the track of pack-horses ; no enclosures, no 

 cultivation, no dwellings, no population except the herdsmen who attended in summer to the 

 feeding of live stock from the valleys, and the smugglers who made temporary depots in the 

 moors on their way from creeks of the coast convenient for their free trade." f 



Since that date at least two-thirds have been enclosed and turned into arable, dairy, or 

 sheep farms. 



Long before Exmoor was disforested the red-deer had been reduced almost to extinction 

 by miscellaneous shooting, and the barbarous practice of hunting and killing hinds heavy in 

 calf The primaeval oak-forests had disappeared, and the stags and hinds now hunted are 

 harboured in plantations not forty years old. In fact, although they have a wider range of 

 wild country to roam over, they owe their e.xistence as much to careful preservation as the 

 herds of Windsor Park. 



The enclosures of the moor country which are regularly hunted are generally of great extent, 

 from fifty to two hundred acres. Red-deer, unlike fallow-deer, cannot bear any kind of enclosure, 

 so when a few more thousand acres are converted by steam ploughing and liming from peat 

 and heath to sheep pastures, it will become difficult to maintain even the present number, said 

 to not much exceed two hundred, all told. 



HUNTING ON EXMOOR. 

 "All who are fond of riding, not to say hunting, will find, at a time of the year when 

 no other hounds are running, at least at a reasonable hour after breakfast, a climate round Exmoor 

 as delightful and restoring as Switzerland, picturesque scenery of the most varied character, and 

 every temptation and facility for the outdoor amusements of a famil)' who like bathing, 

 sketching, fern collecting, and hunting. They will also find great civility and hospitality to 



• "Wearing the Green," a rebel song. + Exmoor Reclamation: Journal ilu- Royal A^rkullural Hoaely of E-^laml, 1S7S. 



