166 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
The fox as a lurker in the London parks survived! t©»a com- 
paratively recent date. So late as the end of the last century 
a good many were still to be found in Hyde Park, and, the 
Banger used to carry a gun in his walks for the purpose of 
shooting them whenever he had a chance. There is extant a 
minute of the Board of Grreen Cloth, dated in 1798, granting a 
pension of 18 1. to Sarah (Pray, in compensation for the loss of 
her husband, who had been accidentally shot by one of the 
keepers whilst they were hunting for foxes in Kensington* 
Hardens.* These animals were but the natural attendants; 
upon the hares and pheasants which existed in the parks at 
that date. When game was no longer preserved there, and 
henroosts were not at hand, the foxes must have left their 
quarters there, or starved. The Banger’s gun probably hastened! 
their extinction by a few years only. 
So long as the parks were on the outskirts of London so long 
was there a chance of accession to the number of ferce naturoe 
within their precincts from the country beyond ; but so soon as 
houses crept up to and surrounded the parks, and the latter 
became more and more resorted to by the public, the impossi- 
bility of preserving the game became apparent, and the attempt 
was abandoned. 
A curious hare hunt took place in Hyde Park in October 
1809, and resulted in the death of what was, perhaps, the last 
hare killed in that park. At that time, and for many years 
afterwards, there were only a few detached houses north of 
the Uxbridge Eoad, an alehouse or two by the roadside, and, 
farther on, two little hamlets in the midst of the fields— viz., 
Craven Hill and Westbourne G-reen — for Paddington was then 
limited to a row of houses along the Edgware Eoad. A hare 
having found her way into Hyde Park from the adjoining 
country, was suddenly discovered on the open space between 
the Barracks and the Serpentine ; and as soon as she was 
started all ranks joined in the chase. Poor Puss, finding 
retreat impossible, took to the Serpentine and swam rapidly 
across. But the alarm having spread to the other side, before 
she could land numbers were waiting ready to receive her. At 
length, being afraid to attempt a landing, and almost exhausted 
by terror and fatigue, she seemed to be drowning, when a boy 
jumped into the water and seized her. A gentleman immedi- 
ately released her from her pain by killing her, and, giving the 
boy a crown, carried away the prize. 
For some years after this, the Eegent’s Park — then private 
royal property — held plenty of hares, and between 1824-2& 
coursing matches used to be held there. 
The marshy pools in Hyde Park which once occupied the site 
* Smith) “ Historical Kecollections of Hyde Park,” 1836, p. 39. 
