70 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



enticed by apple pomace, of which the deer are 

 particularly fond, and which they can scent from a 

 long distance. The keepers of the Chase having 

 reported this to the lord of the manor, litigation 

 ensued, when an investigation of title-deeds showed 

 that the owner of the illegal "deer-leap" was 

 wrongly seised of the estate he held, his pre- 

 decessor having had only a grant for life — a dis- 

 covery which probably would never have been 

 made had it not been for his assuming the right to 

 make a "deer-leap." 



As the narrator of this incident in 1818 was 

 acquainted with the parties, and cognisant of all 

 the proceedings, we may regard it as one of the 

 latest instances on record of the actual use of a 

 "deer-leap." Mr Evelyn Shirley, writing in 1867, 

 refers to the "deer-leap" at Wolseley as "still 

 exercising its privileges," from which we are to 

 infer that at that date deer (presumably fallow deer) 

 came in at least occasionably from Cannock Chase. 

 I have been unable, however, to find any con- 

 firmatory evidence of the existence of deer in that 

 Chase at so recent a date. In Garner's Natural 

 History of the County of Stafford, published in 

 1844, no mention is made of their existence 

 there, although the author of that work speaks of 

 the former existence of the red deer "together 

 with thousands of fallow deer," in the same county, 

 in the forest of Needwood, until its enclosure 

 at the commencement of the last century. As 

 Wolseley Park was separated from Needwood on 

 the north side by the Trent, there can be little 



