Mr. J. E. Harting on Forest Animals. 79
delightful series of letters to Pennant they had dwindled
down to about fifty, and he himself saw one of the last
that was taken, the survivors of the herd being captured
alive by Royal command and removed to Windsor.*
A few red-deer lingered down to the present century
(1827) in Epping Forest; and Bell, in his "History of
British Quadrupeds," speaks of having seen some, many
years ago, in the New Forest. They were doomed in 1851.
It would be interesting to trace out the last haunts of
red-deer in the various counties of England, and I do not
doubt that the inquiry would result in the acquisition of
some curious information ; but to attempt it here would
cause too great a digression.
Those who have not the leisure or opportunity of fol-
lowing the red-deer in the Highlands of Scotland, the wilds
of Kerry, or the moorlands of Devonshire, must be content
to study them in the few parks where they are still pre-
served in a semi-domesticated state. It was formerly the
practice to keep the red-deer and fallow-deer apart in
parks where both species were maintained, owing to an
impression that the stags of the former species would kill
the latter. Gervase Markham, in his edition of the "Maison
Rustique, or the Countrey Farme," printed in 1616, says
(Chap. xix.):—"You shall not by any meanes in one parke
mixe the Red-deere and the Fallow-deere together, for the
Red-deere is a masterfull beast, and when the time of
bellowing cometh, he grows fierce and outragious, so that
hee will be entire lord of the field, and will kill the Fallow-
deere if they but crosse him in his walke; and therefore
each must be kept severally in severall parkes."
That such was the practice in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries is proved by the "Red-deer Parks,"
distinct from parks for fallow-deer, which are found in
many of the great places of England, such as Badminton
in Gloucestershire, and Grimsthorpe in Lincolnshire,
where separate parks for the different kinds of deer were
formerly kept up. The present practice appears to be
generally to allow both red and fallow deer to be
* Gilbert White, Letter VI. to Pennant.