which I have heard old people say abounded much before shooting
flying became so common, and that was the heath-cock, black-
game, or grouse. 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 greyhen was sprung by some beagles in beating for a hare.
The sportsmen cried out, 'A hen pheasant'; but a gentleman present,
who had often seen grouse in the north of England, assured me that
it was a greyhen.

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 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-grandfather (mentioned in a perambulation
taken in 1635), grandfather, father, and self, enjoyed the head
keepership of Wolmer-forest in succession for more than an
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 sovereign!
But he further adds that, by means of the Waltham Hacks, or, to
use his own expression, as soon as they began blacking, they were