16 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
But there was a nobler species of game in this forest, now 
extinct, which I have heard old people say abounded much 
before shooting flying became so common, and that was the 
heath-cock, or black game. When I was a little boy I recol- 
lect one coming now and then to my father's table. The last 
pack remembered was killed about thirty-five years ago ; and 
within these ten years one solitary grey hen was sprung by 
some beagles in beating for a hare. The sportsman cried out, 
''A hen pheasant ! " but a gentleman present, who had often seen 
black game in the north of England, assured me that it was a 
grey hen. 
Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the 
Fauna Selhorniensis ; for another beautiful link in the chain 
of beings is wanting : I mean the red deer, which toward the 
beginning of this century amounted to about five hundred head, 
and made a stately appearance. There is an old keeper, now alive, 
named Adams, whose great-grandfatlier (mentioned in a peram- 
bulation taken in 1635), grandfather, father and self, enjoyed the 
head keepership of Wolmer Forest in succession for more than 
a hundred years. This person assures me, that his father has 
often told him, that Queen Anne, as she was journeying on the 
Portsmouth road, did not think the Forest of Wolmer beneath 
her royal regard. For she came out of the great road at Lippock, 
which is just by, and, reposing herself on a bank smoothed for 
that purpose, lying about half a mile to the east of Wolmer Pond, 
and still called Queen's Bank, saw with great complacency and 
satisfaction the whole herd of red-deer brought by the keepers 
along the vale before her, consisting then of about five hundred 
head. A sight this worthy the attention, of the greatest sove- 
reign ! But he farther adds that, by means of the Waltham 
blacks, or, to use his own expression, as soon as they began 
blacking, they were reduced to about fifty head, and so con- 
tinued decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cumber- 
land. About the year 1737, his highness sent down a hunts- 
man, and six yeomen-prickers, in scarlet jackets laced with 
gold, attended by the stag-hounds ; ordering them to take every 
deer in this forest alive, and to convey them in carts to Windsor. 
In the course of the summer they caught every stag, some of 
