men killed twenty and sometimes thirty brace in a 

 day. 



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, or black 

 game. When I was a little boy I recollect one com- 

 ing 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 grey hen was 

 sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare. The 

 sportsman cried out, ''A hen pheasant!" but a gen- 

 tleman present, who had often seen black game in 

 the north of England, assured me that it was a grey 

 hen. 



Nor does the loss of our black game prove the 

 only gap in the Fauna Selborninisis ; for another 

 beautiful link in the chain of beings is wanting: I 

 mean the red-deer, which towards 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-grand- 

 father (mentioned in a perambulation taken in 1635), 

 grandfather, father and self, enjoyed the head keeper- 

 ship of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than a 

 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. 



19 



