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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
liberius Mas haberunt tempore ejusd. Henrici regis et reisellos- 
suos, et quocl capiant capreolum, milpem, leporem, etc., ubicumque 
Ma invenirent extra regardum forestce mece’ 
It will be observed that tbe word here employed is ca~ 
prcolus ; in many old grants, however, tbe term used to desig- 
nate tbe Roebuck is caprea , wbicb, from its similarity to capra , 
bas led some translators to suppose that tbe goat was intended. 
But, in the first place, tbe context usually shows that tbe 
animals included in a licence to bunt, or to enclose, are beasts of 
tbe forest or of chase, while the goat does not fall within either 
category, being rather an animal of the hillsides and mountains ; 
and, in the next place, contemporary translations of such pass- 
ages go to prove that, even in cases where the term em- 
ployed is capra , or caper (perhaps so written in error by the 
transcriber), the animal so designated is evidently the Roe- 
buck.* 
In the time of Edward III., there were plenty of Roe-deer 
in the ancient forest of Pickering, in the North Riding of 
York ; and in 1340 a prosecution by the Crown was instituted 
against Henry de Percy, lord of the adjacent Manor of Semere, 
for allowing his woodward to carry a bow and arrows, and 
chase and take Roe-deer within the limits of this forest. It 
appears, however, that the defendant established a right of 
free-warren, and pleaded that the Roe was a beast of warren 
and not of the forest.-f* Perhaps it was on this case that Lord 
Coke relied, in holding the Roe to be a beast of warren, a 
decision opposed to the opinion of many old English writers 
on venery, who included this animal amongst the beasts of 
chase. 
We learn from Holinshed, that in Henry the Fifth’s time 
(1413-22), deer were so numerous in England as to be very 
destructive. ‘ Although/ he observes, ‘ of themselves they are 
not offensive at all, yet their great numbers are thought to be 
very prejudiciall, and therefore justly reproved of many. Of 
these also the stag is accounted for the most noble game ; the 
fallow deere is the next, then the roe, of which we have 
indifferent store.’ 
The author of the ballad of ‘ The Battle of Otterbourne 7 
was guilty of no anachronism, when in the following lines he 
introduced the Roe as one of the characteristic animals of 
Northumberland in 1388. 
* A case in point is furnished by John of Trevisa’s translation of the 
Polychronicon of ltanulphus Higden, to which we shalhpresently have occa- 
sion to refer. 
t Placita coi'am Pege apud Westm. Term HU. 13 Ed. III. Rot. 106, 
Ebor. 
