THE NEW FOREST DEER 65 



well everywhere, where the country suited them. 

 But on the New Forest they never greatly 

 throve or attained to a great herd, frequenting 

 only certain parts of the Forest, and, at any rate 

 during the last two hundred years, never increas- 

 ing beyond a head of seventy or eighty all told, 

 although practically nothing was done to keep 

 their numbers down, while all round them was 

 a numerous and ever increasing herd of fallow 

 deer, numbering at various times from 3000 to 

 8000 head; nor did the red deer ever attain 

 great size or carry very good heads. 



A similar state of things formerly existed in 

 the adjacent forests of Alice Holt and Woolmer 

 both under my charge. In the former, growing 

 on a good clay and loam soil, with oak timber 

 and open furzy spaces, fallow deer were numer- 

 ous, but red deer never came there. 



At Woolmer, a heathy, sandy country, with 

 no timber but the Scotch fir, there was always a 

 great herd of red deer. It is recorded by Gilbert 

 White, in his Natural History of Selborne, how 

 Queen Anne, on a journey from London to Ports- 

 mouth, diverged at Liphook into Woolmer Forest, 

 and there, stationed at a spot to this day known 

 as " Queen's Bank," saw the herd of red deer 

 driven past her to the number of some 500 head. 

 Yet these deer rarely put in an appearance at 



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