of Selborne 19 



But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, 

 now extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded 

 much before shooting flying became so common, and that 

 was the heath-cock, black-game, or grouse. When I was 

 a little boy I recollect one coming now and then to my 

 father's table. The last pack remembered was killed 

 about thirty-five years ago ; and within these ten years 

 one solitary greyhen was sprung by some beagles in 

 beating for a hare. The sportsmen cried out, " A hen 

 pheasant " ; but a gentleman present, who had often seen 

 grouse in the north of England, assured me that it was a 

 greyhen. 



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 

 an 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. F6r 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 further adds that, by 

 means of the Waltham blacks, or, to use his own ex- 

 pression, as soon as they began blackings 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 

 an huntsman, and six yeomen-prickers, in scarlet jackets 

 laced with gold, attended by the stag-hounds ; ordering 



