72 THE MAMMALS, REPTILES, AND FISHES OF ESSEX.
" But famous more, as annals tell,
Because of Easter chase,
Where every year, 'twixt dog and deer,
There is a gallant race."
The famous Epping Forest Easter Hunt was supposed by
Harrison Ainsworth (see his novel The Lord Mayor of
London) to owe its origin to the sporting habits of the Lord
Mayors of olden days.
More information
about Essex Red
Deer is conveyed in
The Field (April
5 th, 1884), and in
Messrs. Ball and
Gilbey's Essex Fox-
hounds (1896, pp. 308-
335). There are few
records relating to the
county but make men-
tion of the important
part this animal has
played in the history
of our various families
and estates.
ANTLERS OF THE LAST RED DEER FROM HAINAULT
FOREST.
Mr. J. E. Harting

quotes (Essex Nat, vol.
i., p. 55) from a manuscript note (by Cary himself) in a copy
of Cary's Survey of the Country Fifteen Miles round London
(1786), owned by Mr. B. G. Cole, the statement that the
Crown has an unlimited right to keep Deer in these forests,
of which, during Cary's time, as in Norden's (Description of
Essex, 1594, ed. 1840, p. 9), there was a goodly stock, both
of Red and Fallow Deer. In another manuscript note, Cary
records : "1827, Oct. 20th. I met the staghounds at Hoghill