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eastern extension at present is Lychett, and they have been 
met with as far west as Hook Park. Mr. J. C. Mansell 
Pleydell informed the writer, that in 1879 he estimated there 
were no less than 120 head in the Milton, Whatcombe, and 
Houghton Woods, which fringe the southern side of the Yale 
of Blackmore, from Stoke Wake to Melcombe Park and the 
Grange Wood westward, the number being merely a question 
of preservation or non-preservation.* 
fiha. fi n , in his Anecdotes of Cranbourn Chase , mentions the 
Hoe-deer as an animal indigenous to that part of the country ; 
but as his book was not published until 1816, it seems possible 
that the presence of the Hoes in Cranbourn Chase (where a 
few are still to be found) may have been due to Lord Dor- 
chester’s experiment commenced six years previously. At all 
events, Chafin says nothing of the existence of the Hoe-deer in 
the Chase prior to 1800. 
Dorsetshire is now the only county in England, it is 
believed, where Hoe-deer still exist in a wild state ; not because 
the ancient race have survived there till now, but because, as 
we have seen, it was reintroduced at the commencement of 
the present century, by turning out a few brace procured from 
Scotland.*!* 
In 1810 there were a good many Hoe- deer in the woods 
belonging to the Earl of Egremont at Petworth, Sussex. A 
skull of one of them (a female, with rudimentary horns) was 
presented in that year by Lord Egremont to the Museum of 
the Hoyal College of Surgeons, where it is still preserved (Ho. 
3598 d),$ and the abundance of Hoes in the Petworth woods at 
that date, is proved by his lordship’s letter which accompanied 
the specimen referred to, and which is printed in the Museum 
Catalogue of Monstrosities, part v. p. 17. 
The writer has been recently informed by Lord Leconfield, 
the present owner of Petworth House, that there is a tradition 
to the effect that the Hoe-deer were introduced there, and were 
not the descendants of an ancient stock. About thirty years 
ago, some were sent as a present to Prince Albert, and were 
turned out at Windsor, where a few are still preserved in the 
neighbourhood of Virginia Water. Those which still survive 
at Petworth are kept in the park, which being surrounded by a 
* See The Zoologist, 1879, pp. 120, 170, 209, 262, 301. 
t In addition to the information given on this point in The Zoologist for 
1879, above quoted, the reader will find further details in The Sporting 
Magazine for 1817, in Scott’s British Field Sports, p. 381, and in Gilpin’s 
Forest Scenery (ed. Lauder), vol. ii. p. 301. 
X This skull is figured in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1879, 
{ ). 297, in illustration of some remarks on female deer with antlers, by the 
ate E. K. Alston. 
