English deer parks. 159 



Hearne adds he was informed that " the present park of 

 Ditchley was made by the late Earl of Litchfield ; . . . however 

 this may be, it appears to me that there had been a park before, 

 notwithstanding it might be destroyed. For we have the ' queen's 

 park ' mentioned in these verses, and I take this ' queen's park ' to 

 have been nothing else but this park of Ditchley. 



" Queen Elizabeth had a particular delight in this place ; for 

 which reason she used to stay here weeks, nay months, together. 

 Here she used to hunt and to enjoy herself." 



Some account might be given of the herd of white Deer 

 preserved in the park at Welbeck, that " noble yet melancholy 

 seate," as Evelyn calls it, and of which later I may give some 

 particulars. 



Nor is it by additions only that Mr. Shirley's work may be 

 improved : it stands in need of some revision and correction. For 

 example, on p. 5, the old fable about the dark variety of the 

 Fallow-deer having been introduced by James I. from Norway, is 

 repeated, and Bewick is quoted in support ; whereas, as I have 

 long since pointed out, this variety was known in England at 

 least as far back as 1465.* Equally erroneous is it to suppose 

 with Pennant, Bewick, and others, that the spotted kind was 

 brought from Bengal, these writers having confused the spotted 

 variety of the Fallow-deer with the Axis-deer of India, which is 

 also spotted, but which belongs to quite a different group of the 

 Cervidse. 



At p. 22 Mr. Shirley refers to Sir Thomas Wortley, who was 

 so fond of hunting that in 1510 he built a lodge in the midst 

 of Wharncliffe Chase, where he used to repair in autumn to 

 listen to the noise (technically termed " belling ") made by the 

 stags in the rutting season. This fact is recorded in an inscrip- 

 tion (contemporaneously cut in the solid rock), of which Mr. 

 Shirley gives what purports to be a copy (p. 22) ; but on com- 

 paring it recently with a facsimile, carefully made for the present 

 Lord "Wharncliffe, and recently exhibited by him in the Exhibition 

 of " Sports and Arts " at the Grosvenor Gallery, I found that, in 

 the ten lines Mr. Shirley transcribed, there are no less than 

 fourteen mistakes. According to the facsimile the inscription 

 runs thus : — 



* ' Essays on Sport and Natural History,' p. 13. 



