Mr. J. E. Harting on Forest Animals. 77
The only Ruminants still to be found wild in our forests
are Deer, of which we have three species.
There was a time when we had also wild cattle in the
forest, but those days have long gone by, and we can now
only judge of their appearance from the few scattered
herds which are carefully preserved in certain parks.
To turn, then, to the Deer: the noblest of them all is
the Red-deer, now almost entirely confined to the High-
lands, and a few wild districts in Ireland ; for, with the
exception of Martindale Fells, in Westmoreland, and a
certain portion of Somersetshire and North Devon, where
it still roams in a wild state, it is not to be met with in
England except in a few enclosed parks. And on Martin-
dale Pells, I am informed, the few remaining deer are in a
state of semi-domestication. Still they are the original
descendants of our wild red-deer, and form a pleasing link
of association with the past.
Only a hundred years ago there were red-deer in Corn-
wall. When Borlase published his Natural History of that
county, he wrote: "Red-deer are seldom seen in this
county ; some, however, make their appearance for a time
on the hilly downs about Bodmin, whence they haunt the
woods upon the moors. They are found in greater plenty
in the north, betwixt Launceston and Stratton, as if
they were apprehensive of wanting room to range if they
advanced into the narrow western parts." *
Carew, who published his "Survey of Cornwall" in 1602,
regarded the red-deer then in Cornwall as stragglers from
the adjoining county of Devon, † and no doubt many of
them were stragglers; but Tonkin, in his edition of this
Survey published in 1811, observes; "We have some
red-deer that breed in the inland and eastern parts of the
* Borlase, Nat. Hist. Cornwall, p. 288.
† "Red deere this shire breedeth none, but onely receiveth such as
in the summer season range thither out of Devon : to whom the gentle-
men bordering on their haunt afford so coarse entertainment, that
without better pleading their heeles, they are faine to deliver up
their carcases for a pledge to answere their trespasses,"—"Survey of
Cornwall," p. 23.