302 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
hay. They are, in fact, foddered exactly.the same as 
cattle. In some of the smaller parks they are driven 
into inclosures and fed altogether. This is not the case 
here. Perhaps it was through the foggers, as the labourers 
are called who fodder cattle and carry out the hay in the 
morning and evening, that deer poachers of old discovered 
that they could approach the deer by carrying a bundle 
of sweet-smelling hay, which overcame the scent of the 
body and baffled the buck’s keen nostrils till the thief was 
within shot. The foggers, being about so very early in 
the morning,—they are out at the dawn,—have found out 
a good many game secrets in their time. If the deer 
were outside the forest at any hour it was sure to be 
when the dew was on the grass, and thus they noticed 
that with the hay truss on their heads they could walk 
up quite close occasionally. Foggers know all the game 
on the places where they work ; there is not a hare or a 
rabbjt, a pheasant or a partridge, whose ways are not 
plain to them. There are no stories now of stags a 
century old (three would go back to Queen Elizabeth) ; 
they have gone, like other traditions of the forest, before 
steam and breechloader. Deer lore is all but extinct, 
the terms of venery known but to a few; few, indeed, 
could correctly name the parts of a buck if one were 
‘sent them. The deer are a picture only—a picture that 
lives and moves and is beautiful to look at, but must 
not be rudely handled. Still, they linger while the 
marten has disappeared, the polecat is practically gone, 
and the badger becoming rare. It is curious that the 
badger has lived on through sufferance for three cen- 
turies. Nearly three centuries ago, a chronicler ob- 
served that the badger would have been rooted out 
before his time had it not been for the parks, There 
was no great store of badgers then; there is no great 
