THE ROE-DEER. 83 
done so five times, and yet few men have slain more Roes.” 
Charles St. John has truly said (‘Sport in Moray,’ p. 34) that no 
man with any feeling can kill a Roe without a pang of regret; 
and yet his natural instinct as an animal of prey will lead him 
on to hunt and kill another Roe an hour afterwards! 
The Roe was introduced into Dorsetshire at the beginning of 
the present century by the then owner of Milton Abbey, who 
kept some in a large walled-in park which he made there. After 
they had increased rapidly, his neighbour Mr. Drax begged some, 
and turned them out in Vere Wood, which was then fenced in by 
a park-paling. Here they also went on increasing; the paling 
fell out of repair, and the deer wandered and spread over the 
country. In 1879 Mr. Mansel-Pleydell estimated that there were 
about 120 head, and in 1884 about 150 head, in the Milton, 
Whatcombe, and Houghton Woods, which fringe the southern 
side of the Vale of Blackmoor, from Stoke Wake to Melcombe 
Park, and the Grange Wood westward, the number being merely 
a question of preservation or non-preservation by adjoining land- 
owners. It is said that Lord Portman, in the interest of fox- 
hunters, gives a reward for every Roe killed in his coverts, to 
prevent his hounds from following their scent, as they will do, in 
preference to that of fox. 
From the centre of distribution above mentioned the Roe- 
deer sometimes wander to a considerable distance, but generally 
get killed before they succeed in establishing themselves in a 
new locality. In 1883 a buck was found in Somersetshire, and 
hunted by the Seavington Hounds, who came upon him in the 
chain of large coverts lying to the south of the Vale of Taunton. 
They ran him eight miles with a burning scent, and killed him 
near Otterford. No doubt he had strayed from South Dorset- 
shire, perhaps from the Hook Park coverts on Lord Sandwich’s 
property, which would be about twenty miles from the place 
where he was found. 
It was in Dorsetshire, in the spring of 1884 that some Roe- 
deer were captured in the coverts of Mr. Mansel-Pleydell at 
Whatcombe and Houghton, and of Col. Hamboro at Milton, ond 
transported by cart and rail into Essex, where they were liberated 
the next day in Epping Forest to re-stock the glades in which 
their species had formerly roamed, but where they had long been 
extinct. It was our privilege to take part in the capture, the 
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