244 DEER AND DEER PARKS. Ch. XI. 



and invigorating diet (additional food), if in the winter, supplied. Deer are 

 also subject to bowel complaints, known at Croxton Park, Leicestershire, 

 as 'theinortl and at Garendon, in the same county, as 'the gurry ! The 

 only remedies are to feed on dry food,- such as hay, beans,, and acornS, with 

 leaves of ivy and branches of ash. In a few parks, also, (I allude to, Han- 

 bury, in Worcestershire, and to Calke, in Derbyshire,) the hoofs of the deer 

 are frequently found to grow to an unnatural size, thereby causing lameness ; 

 the only remedy appears to be to catch the desr, and pare the hoof. 



With regard to additional winter food, I have already observed that 

 shelter is of much. greater consequence; to this it may be added, that much 

 also depends upon the keep of the deer in summer, for if from want of grass 

 they are allowed to get low in condition before a severe winter sets in, they 

 often die, however well fed during the hard weather. Hay appears to he 

 the most natural additional food that can be given to deer, and to this may 

 be added horse and Spanish chestnuts, acorns, and beech masts,' which 

 can be collected outside a deer park and kept for a winter supply at an 

 expense very trifling compared with their value ; at Escrick, in Yorkshire, 

 what they call ' leafey hay' is also made, that is, branches of deciduous 

 trees cut down in the summer, and dried with the leaves on, like hay, and 

 stacked in the same manner; deer are glad of it in, the winter, .and are 

 known at all times to eat greedily the bark, of all trees, particularly ash 

 and willow, Scotch and spruce fir ; perhaps ivy is their most favourite 

 ' browse ;' ^ but park-keepers should beware of yew. In the winter of 1865, 



' It is very desirable to plant whitethorns in cut down at these periods, and left in the most 



parks, the deer being very fond of the haws. tempting places. 'The deer will,' he says, 



Indeed, the excellence of doe venison in some ' amuse themselves with them for hours together, 



parks has been ascribed to the hawthorns which butting at them, and tearing off the bark.' In 



grow in them. the Royal Forests, ' browse wood ' for the winter 



'^ Browse. — Deer are most destructive to trees feeding of the deer was formerly regularly cut. 

 in the rutting season, and in the month of " One of the keepers in the New Forest reported, 

 February, when they are very fond of barking in the year 1 788, that, if the cutting of browse 

 ash trees, they have singular propensities forparti- wood was stopped, it would require about three 

 cular trees and spots in each wood or division of tons of hay yearly for each 100 deer, within his 

 apark. Mr. Menzies, superintendent of Windsor walk. — Appendix to 1st Report of the Surveyor- 

 Park, recommends a few of the bad trees to be General of His Majesty's Land Revenues. 



