By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 



29 



mind that, in the earliest days of society, hunting" was not the mere 

 amusement, the rather expensive amusement, that it is now. It 

 was a necessity. 



Before lands were legally divided and appropriated, the original 

 natives of this, as of most countries, lived hy hunting. They pre- 

 ferred chasing and catching their food to digging or ploughing for 

 it. Of course it became necessary, before long, to put this sort of 

 wild scramble into some order, to divide districts and lay down laws. 

 In the very earliest division of land, large tracts of forest would be 

 set aside for the King's share : and these, in their original dimen- 

 sions, became private property of the Crown — " ancient demesne/' 

 as it was called. Our earliest forefathers were certainly hunters, 

 for their burial places, the barrows, are seldom opened without pre- 

 senting horns of deer, or the spear-head of the sportsman deceased. 

 So were the Romans; and at Savernake. It should be mentioned 

 that there are hereabouts abundant traces ol them : such as a road 

 right through the forest from Winchester, branching off towards 

 Cirencester : a station at Folly Farm, many silver coins of Julius 

 Caesar found at the forest brick-kilns, a curious brass vessel at 

 Mildenhall, the famous cup at Eudge : tessellated pavements, a 

 small portion of one at a spot about one hundred yards in front of 

 the Marquis of Ailesbury's house, but a very fine and perfect one 

 at Littlecote. It may be added that the designs and figures in the 

 mosaic (rather musaic { ) work of these pavements are very frequently 

 what we now call hunting-pieces : from which the propensities of 

 the owners may be inferred. 2 



Our next masters, the Saxons, were also given to forest-hunting, 

 but not so selfishly as some of their successors. This we know 



1 It is not an uncommon mistake to consider the word " mosaic " as borrowed 

 from the description given by Moses in Exodus, xxviii., 17, of the high priest's 

 breastplate : " set in settings of stones," in rows, and of different kinds and 

 colours : but the true derivation is from the Greek word, " Movo-eiov," i.e., museum : 

 "domicilium musis apparatum," that kind of embellished floor having been 

 chiefly used in buildings or rooms appropriated to works of art. 



2 " At East Coker, in Dorsetshire, one was discovered some years ago in which 

 the figures of hounds pursuing deer were beautifully depicted." Chronicle of 

 Cranborne, p. 102. 



