AN ENGLISH DEER-PARK, 303 
store now. Sketches remain in old country-houses 
of the chase of the merten; you sce the hounds all 
yelping round the foot of a tree, the marten up in it, 
and in the middle of the hounds the huntsman in top- 
‘boots and breeches. You can but smile at it. To 
Americans it must forcibly recall the treeing of a ’coon. 
The deer need keep no watch, there are no wolves to 
pull them down; and it is quite probable that the 
absence of any danger of that kind is the reason of 
their tameness even more than the fact that they are 
not chased by man. Nothing comes creeping stealthily 
through the fern, or hunts them through the night. 
They can slumber in peace. There is no larger beast 
of prey than a stoat, or a stray cat. But they retain 
their dislike of dogs, a dislike shared by cattle, as if 
‘they too dimly remembered a time when they had been 
hunted. The list of animals still living within the pale 
and still wild is short indeed. Besides the deer, which 
are not wild, there are hares, rabbits, squirrels, two kinds 
of rat,—the land and the water rat,—stoat, weasel, mole, 
and mouse. There are more varieties of mouse than of 
any other animal: these, the weakest of all, have 
escaped best, though exposed to so many enemies. A 
few foxes, and still fewer badgers, complete the list, for 
there are no other animals here. Modern times are 
fatal to all creatures of prey, whether furred or feathered ; 
and so even the owls are less numerous, both in actual 
numbers and in variety of species, than they were even 
fifty years ago. 
But the forest is not vacant. It is indeed full of 
happy life. Every hollow tree—and thcre are many. 
hollow trees where none are felled—has its nest of 
starlings, or titmice, or woodpeckers. Woodpeckers 
are numerous, and amusing to watch. Wood-pigcons 
