68 THE NEW FOREST 



I ever beheld, superior to anything in Mr. Astley's 

 riding school." 



This settled the Woolmer red deer, and it 

 was not long before the fallow deer of Alice Holt 

 were also wiped out. 



Both these properties were under my charge 

 as Deputy Surveyor for the whole period of my 

 residence in Hants, so it seems but natural to 

 put in a few words about matters that I was so 

 intimately connected with myself, though not in re- 

 spect of the New Forest. Although there was no 

 dividing line between the haunts of the red deer 

 and those of the fallow deer in the New Forest, yet 

 it was remarkable how they each kept to their 

 own particular ground. The red, as I have said, 

 were undoubtedly the indigenous deer of Great 

 Britain. It is always believed that the fallow deer 

 were introduced into England by the Romans, and 

 Mr. Millais (see British Deer and their Horns) 

 is of opinion that the New Forest deer are 

 descendants of Asiatic fallow deer from the shores 

 of the Sea of Marmora. At any rate, New Forest 

 deer, which are very fine, and often attain to very 

 good weights, differ in various ways from park 

 deer. In parks you see fallow deer, i.e. deer that 

 are of a pale red colour, with innumerable buff 

 or white spots on their sides. Again you see dun 

 deer nearly black on the back, but a lighter dun 



