CHAPTER VIII 



THE NEW FOREST DEER 



WHILE treating of the keepers and their former 

 vocations, it may be well to give some details of 

 the deer as they used to be, when the Forest 

 was a huge deer park full of half tame deer, 

 and as it is now when it contains a compara- 

 tively small number of quite wild deer. 



There is no doubt that the New Forest 

 district did from very ancient times constitute 

 a Forest specially suited to deer. In the days 

 of Canute it was made into a Royal Forest, 

 conveniently situated to Southampton, where he 

 had a palace, and where also he tried the his- 

 torical experiment of seeing whether the tide 

 would or would not wet his feet. Like other 

 monarchs in more recent times, he discovered 

 that he was not superior to the forces of nature. 



There was therefore without doubt a stock 

 of deer prior to the occupation of the Danes, or 

 Canute would not have enacted laws for their 

 preservation. The original stock of Great Britain 

 was no doubt the red deer. They were pretty 



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