78 Mr. J. E. Harting on Forest Animals.
county, though not very many." * The fact of their
breeding, however, in Cornwall at that date is significant,
showing that there must have been a good deal of wild
ground well suited to their habits.
Years after Carew's "Survey" had appeared there were
still plenty of wild red-deer in Hatfield Chace, and Prynne
has left a graphic account of the mode in which they were
hunted there in the time of James I. He describes how,
for the amusement of Prince Henry, a large herd was sur-
rounded and driven down to the Trent, where they were
forced to take the water, their antlers resembling, when
close together, a moving forest; how they were pursued in
boats by the Prince and his companions, and how the
fattest were then selected and killed, and drawn on shore
with ropes.
The precise date at which the red-deer became extinct
in that wild Chace could only be approximately surmised,
for the nature of the country was such as to favour their
existing there for a period long subsequent to the event
described by Prynne. †
In Lancashire, in the great forests of Bowland and
Blackburnshire, there were red-deer until the commence-
ment of the present century. The last herd was destroyed
there in 1805. ‡
In Gloucestershire, red-deer were introduced into the
Forest of Dean in 1842, when two stags and four hinds
from Woburn were enlarged. They increased slowly until
1849, when in consequence of the frequent and serious
poaching affrays which took place, and the great difficulty
in preserving them, all the deer in this forest were ordered
to be killed.
Gilbert White's description of the red-deer in Wolmer
Forest, Hampshire, must be familiar to everyone. In
Queen Anne's time, he says, they numbered about five
hundred head; but some years before he commenced his
* Op. cit. ed. Tonkin, 4to., 1811, p. 77.
† See Devon, Issues of the Exchequer (Pell Records), p. 293.
‡ Whitaker, History of Whalley, vol. i., p. 205.