WILD STAG-HUNTING. 185 



common, and he speaks of having seen runs of ten or twelve 

 miles from point to point. Then, however, it was still con- 

 sidered the sport for kings and nobles, and beyond the reach of 

 ordinary mortals, though there can be little doubt that in those 

 days deer were abundant in many parts of England. In fact, 

 at the end of the eighteenth century we know that they 

 abounded in the Vale of Belvoir, which was then open and 

 unenclosed, but the historian has not told us whether they were 

 red or fallow deer. 



In Hampshire there was a large herd inliabiting Woolmer 

 Forest, and they ate thus described by Gilbert While, of S el- 

 borne, in a letter which is unfortunately undated : — "l^or does 

 the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the ' Fauna 

 Selborniensis ; or Xatural History of Selborne,' 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 grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation taken 

 in 1635), grandfather, father, and self, enjoyed the head- 

 keepership of AVoolmer Forest 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 Woolmer beneath her royal regard, 

 for she came out of the great road at Liphook, which is just by, 

 and reposing herself on a bank smoothed for that purpose, 

 lying about haK a mile to the east of Woolmer Pond, and is 

 stiU 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 expression, as soon as they began 

 blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so con- 

 tinued decreasing tiU the time of the late Duke of Cumberland. 



