THE DEER OF EPPING FOREST. 57
There can be no doubt that, from long isolation and continued
breeding in and in, the herd has considerably degenerated. So far
as I have been able to ascertain, there has been no importation of
fresh blood within the memory of three generations of keepers. One
man had heard his grandfather say that he remembered, when a boy,
two cartloads of deer coming to Epping from Windsor, but nothing
more could be ascertained respecting them. At present, the number
of fallow deer in Epping Forest is estimated to be about eighty, or a
24 We are indebted to Sir Fowell Buxton's kindness for the loan of the head from which the
above drawing was taken. We were assured by one of the keepers that the animal was a full-
grown buck over eight years old, with much-developed antlers—indeed, abnormally so, the palma-
tion being far in excess of that commonly observed in the forest deer. The specimen was
selected for illustration as being a remarkably fine one, but the breadth of the antlers hardly
conveys a correct idea of the average growth of these appendages in our forest breed : in by far
the greater number of animals the antlers are much more attenuated.—Ed.