222 REMINISCENCES OF A HUNTSMAN 



most deservedly. I discovered it also to be a system to break 

 dogs to the young black-game in the forest in the month of 

 August, of course to the destruction of a great many from each 

 brood ; and this also I represented. Previously to this, his late 

 Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge ruled that no game 

 should be shot in the forest until the first of October, black- 

 game and partridge shooting under the old system having 

 commenced together on the first of September. Instead of 

 the forest streams being i-etained for those in possession of the 

 royal liberty, they were not only fished by the keepers and 

 woodmen themselves, but by any stranger or gipsy who could 

 hold a rod, set a night line, or dam up the water for the purposes 

 of laving and catching the fish : this neglect, I understand, has 

 also been very properly remedied. Then, as to the deer, and 

 what became of the best bucks ! Lord Stuart de Rothesay was 

 a master keeper of the walk nearest me, Holmesley, and in the 

 number of years I rented under him, and dined at his table on 

 the venison his walk occasionally supplied, I never saw a haunch 

 that was from what ought to have been a warrantable deer; 

 and in the longer period, now fourteen years, that I have con- 

 tinued since his lordship's death to rent under Lady Stuart de 

 Rothesay, out of the bucks given to me by the Crown, never less 

 than one a year and sometimes more — out of those deer brought 

 me by the keepers, I never had what could properly be termed a 

 fat buck. Such a name, in fact, had these warrant or rather 

 unwarrantable deer obtained for the forest venison, that when 

 Lord Seymour's Cruelty Act came into force for the " removal,'" 

 as he tenderly expressed it, of the New Forest deer, and the 

 venison was all to be sold, people turned up their noses at it, 

 and said it was not worth buying even at fom-jDence per pound. 

 I knew better, from having seen the best bucks that used to go 

 the Lord — I speak not irreligiously, my good readers ! — the 

 Lord Duncan only knew and knows where ; and when I heard 

 that all the bucks were for sale, I immediately jumped at giving 

 any piice they chose to fix on them, provided I might select 

 and kill each buck myself, undertaking to give the highest value 



