BUCK-HUNTING. 245 



lingered much longer, as I have shown, and were hunted by 

 the present Mr. Selby Lowndes. Also, within the memory of 

 middle-aged men, fallow as well as red deer were to be found 

 on Exmoor, and were there hunted with harriers ; but I believe 

 there are none at the present time, except in the deer park of 

 Mr. Snow, a wealthy yeoman at Oare, on the borders of the 

 forest. Save in these instances, there was no buck-hunting to 

 my knowledge in England, except when harriers were laid on the 

 scent of an outlying one, and with these capital sport was shown. 

 Strange changes, however, came about when the order went 

 forth to destroy the deer in the New Forest. There were 

 thousands of fallow deer in that wild part of Hampshire ; when 

 hunting red deer there, I have seen them cross the line of the 

 hounds in hundreds. How ruthlessly and wastefully they were 

 slaughtered is now matter of history, and how, when their 

 numbers had become few and they were shy from persecution, 

 the Hon. Grantley Berkeley and his old bloodhound Druid still 

 worked amongst them, until only one was left that took to 

 herding with the forest ponies, was all recorded by his pen in 

 the Field. Even then the destruction was not so complete 

 as was imagined. A few had taken refuge in neighbouring 

 manors, where I think they had the hand of protection held 

 over them, and in a very few years there was a sprinkling of 

 fallow deer once more in the forest, though the nobler red 

 stag was gone for ever. Eew in numbers and shy from per- 

 secution, these were very different from their ancestors, who 

 would run right across the track of the horsemen when in 

 chase ; and, when we consider the sporting instincts which have 

 always characterized the inhabitants of the forest, there was 

 nothing more natural than that leave should be asked from the 

 Crown to hunt them. I think I am correct in saying that 

 Mr. John St. John and Mr. James Dear, who took their harriers 

 there for the month of April some fifteen or sixteen years ago, 

 were the first to indulge in this sport, but on that point I am 

 open to correction. I know it was in their time that I had first 



