56 THE ROYAL FORESTS OF ENGLAND 



He also states that the lord of a forest might enter, by his 

 officers, into any man's wood within the forest limits, to cut 

 such browsewood for the deer in winter. It was usual to cut 

 it in the late autumn, and store it ready for sprinkling about 

 when the severe weather or frosts came. It was supposed to 

 be cut from twigs that were not more than an inch in circum- 

 ference, nor heavier than a deer may readily turn up with his 

 horns. In all forests the browsewood seems to have chiefly 

 consisted of oak twigs ; but evidence is cited showing that 

 holly and ivy, as well as maple, hazel, thorn, and ash were 

 occasionally used for this purpose. 



In the more favourite royal forests, such as Rockingham, 

 Clarendon, and Windsor, a certain amount of hay was also 

 used for the winter feeding of the deer at an early period, but 

 in later forest history hay-feeding became commoner. 



Everything in the forest was made to give way to the deer, 

 and where hedges or enclosures of any kind were permitted 

 for the cultivation of crops, they had always to be constructed 

 sufficiently low to allow of the ingress and egress of the deer. 



The owners of lands adjoining the forest were in the habit, 

 if they had a grant of imparking, of making certain contriv- 

 ances called deer-leaps or salteries (saltatoria). These were so 

 contrived that the deer could readily leap into the park over a 

 fence of moderate height, but were prevented from returning 

 by a steep upward slope in the ditch inside the park fence. 

 Occasionally such deer-leaps were deliberately constructed in 

 parks within a forest for the convenience of catching or herd- 

 ing the deer. But there are various instances of deer-leaps 

 being presented to the justices in eyre as a nuisance to the 

 forest. If it was within a short distance of the forest, they 

 had power to order its removal. At the Cumberland eyre of 

 1285, a presentment was made that Isabel of Clifford had a 

 park with two deer-leaps, one of which was a mile (leuca), and 

 the other a mile and a half from the forest of Quinfield. At 

 an inquisition at Somerton, in 1364, the jurors complained of 

 two deer-leaps three miles distant from the forest, as detri- 

 mental to the king's game and contrary to the assize of the 

 forest. 



BUCKSTALLS, etc. There are various references in forest 

 proceedings to buckstalls. A buckstall was an extended trap or 



