BUCK-nUXTING. 241 



districts -where the sport could be well carried out, with no 

 more damage in any way to the country than is now done by 

 the red deer-hunting in Devonshire, because I believe the buck, 

 in equal numbers, would be not so destructive as the stag. 



In parenthesis, I may say that it is odd in these days, 

 when every care seems turned to increased production of food 

 for the nation, that no one has ever thought of stocking 

 his woods with deer. It is well known that they browse 

 more than they graze, and would thus draw a large 

 amount of sustenance from ivy and other sources in our 

 coverts, and convert into food for man what is now totally lost. 

 That such a plan is feasible is proved by the fact that a manor 

 at Sunninghill, near Ascot, was held a few years (and no doubt 

 is still) on condition of the owner keeping a certain (small) 

 number of wild bucks on it. There was a park in the place, 

 but no deer in it, the herd living about in the coverts and 

 hedgerows ; and the man who was annually employed to shoot 

 them told me that they did comparatively little harm to the 

 corn ; but from being few in number, and having good choice of 

 food, grew exceedingly fine, so that, to use his own words, " the 

 does were nearly as big as hinds." I may say he was an old 

 forester, as his family had been before him for three hundred 

 years, and knew all about deer and their habits. 



To return to the subject of hunting, although anciently 

 esteemed much as a beast of chase, the buck and doe did 

 not rank as a beast of forest with the hart, hind, hare, boar, 

 and wolf ; the beast of chase being the buck, doe, fox, marten, 

 and roe. The dijBTerence between a chase and forest was that 

 the chase had no courts as a forest had, and offenders 

 therein were punished by the common law, instead of by the 

 forest law. Every forest is a chase, but every chase is not a 

 forest. 



In Queen Elizabeth's reign the buck appears to have taken 

 precedence of the hart hounds, at any rate in the matter of 

 expense, as the following will show : — 



