GAME. When I was a little boy, I recollect 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 gray 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 gray hen.

Nor does the loss of our black game prove the only gap in the Fauna Selborniensis, for another beautiful link in the chain of beings is wanting: I mean the RED DEER, which, towards 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-grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation 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 pur. pose, 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 sovereign! 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 continued

decreasing till the time of the late Duke of Cum. berland. It is now more than thirty years ago that his highness sent down a huntsman 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 which showed ex

traordinary diversion; but in the following winter, when the hinds were also carried off, such fine chases were exhibited as served the country people for matter of talk and wonder for years afterward. I saw myself one of the yeomen prickers single out a stag from the herd, and must confess that it was the most curious feat of activity I ever beheld, superior to anything in Mr. Astley's riding-school. The exertions made by the horse and deer much exceeded all my expectations, though the former greatly excelled the latter in speed. When the devoted deer was separated from his companions, they gave him, by their watches, law, as they called it, for twenty minutes; when, sounding their horns, the stop-dogs were permitted to pursue, and a most gallant scene ensued.

LETTER VII.

THOUGH large herds of deer do much harm to the neighbourhood, yet the injury to the morals of the people is of more moment than the loss of their crops. The temptation is irresistible, for most men are sportsmen by constitution; and there is such an inherent spirit for hunting in human nature as scarce any inhibitions can restrain. Hence, towards the beginning of this century, all this country was wild about deer-stealing. The Waltham blacks at length committed such enormities, that government was forced to interfere with that severe and sanguinary act called the Black Act,* which now * Statute 9 Geo. I., c, 22.

comprehends more felonies than any law that ever was framed before; and, therefore, a late Bishop of Winchester, when urged to re-stock Waltham Chase,* refused, from a motive worthy of a prelate, replying, "It had done mischief enough already.

Our old race of deer-stealers are hardly extinct yet. It was but a little while ago that, over their ale, they used to recount the exploits of their youth: such as watching the hind to her lair, and, when the calf was found, paring its feet with a penknife to the quick, to prevent its escape till it was large and fat enough to be killed; the shooting at one of their neighbours with a bullet in a turnip-field by moonshine, mistaking him for a deer; and the losing a dog in the following extraordinary manner: Some fellows, suspecting that a calf was deposited in a certain spot of thick fern, went with a lurcher to surprise it; when the parent hind rushed out of the brake, and, taking a vast spring, with all her feet close together, pitched upon the neck of the dog, and broke it short in two.

Another temptation to idleness and sporting was number of rabbits, which possessed all the hillocks and dry places; but these being inconvenient to the huntsman on account of their burrows, when they came to take away the deer, they permitted the country people to destroy them all.

Such forests and wastes, when their allurements to irregularities are removed, are of considerable service to neighbourhoods that verge upon them, by furnishing them with peat and turf for their firing; with fuel for the burning their lime, and

*This chase remains unstocked to this day: the bishop was Dr. Hoadley.

with ashes for their grasses; and by maintaining their geese and their stock of young cattle at little or no expense.

The manor farm of the parish of Greatham has an admitted claim, I see (by an old record taken from the Tower of London), of turning all livestock on the forest at proper seasons, bidentibus exceptis.* The reason, I presume, why sheept are excluded is, because, being such close grazers, they would pick out all the finest grasses, and hinder the deer from thriving.

Though (by statute 4 and 5 Wm. and Mary, c. 23) "to burn on any waste, between Candlemas and Midsummer, any grig, ling, heath and furze, goss or fern, is punishable with confinement in the House of Correction," &c., yet in this forest, about March or April, according to the dryness of the season, such vast heath-fires are lighted up that they often get to a masterless head, and, catching the hedges, have sometimes been communicated to the underwoods, woods, and coppices, where great damage has ensued. The plea for these burnings is, that when the old coat of heath, &c., is consumed, young will sprout up, and afford much tender browse for cattle; but where there is large old furze, the fire, following the roots, consumes the very ground, so that for hundreds of acres nothing is to be seen but smother and desolation, the whole circuit round looking like the cinders of a volcano; and the soil being quite exhausted, no traces of vegeta

For this privilege the owner of that estate used to pay to the king annually seven bushels of oats,

+ In the Holt, where a full stock of fallow-deer has been kept up till lately, no sheep are admitted to this day.