ENGLISH DEER PARKS.
A WRITER in the Edinburgh Review for July contributes a most interesting article on the past and present of English deer parks. Among the books which form the matter of comment are Whitaker's well-known "Descriptive List of English Deer Parks," and Mr. John D. Caton's work on "The Antelope and Deer of America " ; Mr. J. G. Millais's fine monograph on "Park Deer" is not included. But the writer of the article himself contributes to the subject a large stock of curious and fresh historical facts, and several pages on the success or failure of the great experiments in acclimatising nearly every species of deer at Woburn, which are entirely new and of the greatest possible interest. It appears that thirty-one parks are mentioned in Domesday Book, and that only one of these is still reserved for its original purpose, Midge, a fine wild park of two thousand five hundred acres in Sussex, now the property of the Marquis of Abergavenny. Besides parks there were "hays," which were permanent traps for deer, formed by enclosures into which they were driven by dogs and men. These were clearly " fixed engines " in open country. The writer mentions that one still exists in Warwickshire, and that it is about half- a-mile square, but does not name the locality. These hays still remain in many German forests. The Kings seem to have been chary of allowing the formation of deer parks, and a license was always necessary until after the Restoration (1660). Probably, as all deer were by Norman and Angevin law nominally the property of the Sovereigns, the latter knew that, to stock the parks, deer must be obtained from outside, and that virtually they were acting against their own interests in granting licenses. We believe that in some cases the number of head which might be kept was expressly limited. Otherwise the owner might kill off his own stock, and then make good the deficit by enticing in outlying deer. This was a regular practice, for a coveted form of grant was the permission to make a " deer leap," or sanatorium, as it is described in the grants. It was a kind of trap by which the deer could make their way into the park, but could not jump back. This was almost as bad as decoy- ing your neighbour's pheasants with raisins. It seems as though the origin of the name "Deer's Leap" in the New Forest, generally ascribed to a jump made by a hunted buck, should possibly be sought in the former existence of one of these deer leaps at the spot.
The great antiquity of almost every surviving object or cus-
tom connected with deer parks is very clearly set out in the Edin- burgh. The name "Lodge" often given to some fine mansion in such parks (as the White Lodge at Richmond) is a survival of the days when an owner, after obtaining leave to enclose a park, selected some useless and rough ground, often at a con- siderable distance, and necessarily had to build " lodgings," probably a wooden sporting hut, for his accommodation. The original lodges in the New Forest, such as that at Malwood where Rufus slept and dined before his murder, were examples. " Here the owner might retire for a while from the troubles of the world, enjoy the sylvan surroundings, and indulge in the pleasures of the chase, pleasures which have always been delightful to man because they exercise the body and mind without the pain of thinking. To-day a game of golf and a week-end at a seaside hotel have replaced hunting and the lodge. The keepership of one of the Royal parks was in old days a rare prize ; and the younger brothers of knightly families were often made lodge-keepers of the ancestral park."
Shooting wild deer, driven past in a wild forest, with the longbow, the sport in which Rufus met his death, was beyond question exciting and fascinating. But what must strike, every one is the extraordinary tameness and badness of the. sport of hunting creatures like fallow-deer in a park from which they could not escape, andwhere they had not a chance of any kind. Mr. Jack Brag explained in a confidential letter to a friend that his new M.F.H. was "not fit to hunt a kat in a kitchen." But a person who did not rise to the exigencies of the latter sport might have shone brilliantly as a hunter of park deer. It seems extraordinary that this form of deer- baiting, which no one would now think of taking a part in, was looked upon as a great privilege in old England, and carried on in modern days as late as the reign of Ge..age In Osbaldistone's "Dictionary of Sport" all the terms and etiquette of buck-hunting are correctly given, as matter of use for practical sportsmen, though the work was published as late as 1792. George I. and George IL used to hunt bucks
regularly in the Home Park at Hampton Court, a " diver- sion " which the Maids of Honour had to attend. George IL told the Duke of Grafton that fox-hunting was cruel, but would hunt stags for four or five hours every Wednesday
and Saturday. Buck-hunting only survives in the New Forest, where the animals are wild fallow-deer with unlimited range, and have all such chances of escape as a buck could have before the large, untiring modern hound. The hounds described by Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream, " crook'd-kneed, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls," were evidently a very slow breed. It seems just possible that they were kept unimproved in form in order to make the " run " last longer. "Buck hunting," says our writer, "was a slimmer- diversion in those days, but often in the hot weather it was put off till after dinner, the usual dining hour being then two :o'clock."
A wall or paling was an essential in a park, which was always enclosed. It is stated in the Edinburgh that the oldest park wall is at Wootton, in Staffordshire. It is of stone, ten feet high and four thick, and was built in the reign of Richard II. There is an ancient tradition that Woodstock, where Henry I. rebuilt a "palace" of Alfred's (probably a
hunting lodge), was the first park enclosed by a wall. The finest wall round a small deer park is that at Magdalen
College, Oxford. The possession of a deer park by a body like a College is a curious relic of the days when parks and sporting rights were commonly attached to monastic and semi-monastic societies. The See of Norwich had thirteen
parks, and that of Canterbury twenty parks and chases. Since Shirley wrote his book in 1867 fifty parks which he mentioned'
have ceased to be stocked with deer. On the other hand, new deer parks are made from time to time. In 1892, when Mr. Whitaker published his "Descriptive List," there were four hundred parks or paddocks containing deer in England. The largest is Savernake, of four thousand acres; and the smallest a paddock at Pine House, Tottenham, now reduced to half an acre ! The Hyde Park deer were only removed at the Coronation of Queen Victoria, when a vast number of persons were regaled there, and the deer, which it was feared might be injured, were removed to Bushey. There their descendants retain their Cockney habits, begging bread and buns from luncheon parties. If some of these were brought back to Kensington Gardens they would greatly add to their liveliness. It is not noted in the Edinburgh that one small deer park still remains in London. It is attached to Bute House, a large mansion facing Brook Green.
The facts relating to the Woburn collection are very in- structive. Altogether " 1,020 foreign deer have been received at Woburn since 1892, and very many others have been bred
there. On the other hand, the mortality has been heavy, and the number now in the collection is just over 700. This does
not include the large herds of red-deer and fallow-deer, nor the roe-deer in the woods. Nor does it include the muntjaks and hog-deer which conceal themselves in the plantations, and whose exact number cannot be recorded." Sambur, the large stags of India, do well, are hardy, and increase steadily. They are kept in paddocks, otherwise, as they are nocturnal in habit, they would not be seen, but would lie in the woods and die from the damp, as they did at Powerscourt. Russ-deer from Java, the Celebes, and Moluccas also do well. Muntjaks breed, but keep out of sight, and hog-deer have increased both in the park and in the woods so rapidly that all count of them has been lost. The Pekin siker deer have increased until they number over one hundred ; Formosa deer have flourished, and also the curious creatures called Pere David's deer, which were only known to exist in the Imperial hunting park near Pekin. They have long tails, like a donkey's, a bray not unlike that of the same animal, and spreading hoofs. The herd at Pekin was destroyed, and none of the breed are believed to remain in Asia. Thirty remain in Europe in captivity, of which one is at Berlin, one at Amsterdam, and twenty-eight at Woburn. Thus the only herd of deer once the sole property of the Emperors of China is to be found in the park of an English noble in Bedfordshire, a unique occurrence in the annals of natural history. Truly we are a conservative nation. Japanese deer are the new animals in favour, some twelve parks possessing these hardy and fine deer, the introduction of which is due to Lord Powerscourt. But the Woburn experiments have proved beyond a doubt that the cheetul, the lovely spotted jungle stag of Central and Southern India, the prey of the tiger and the companion of the peacock, is eminently suited for English parks. Its shape is more compact than that of the fallow, the horns finer, the spotted coat of clearer, brighter hue. It is astonishing that the tropical deer should do so well. " There are ninety or more in the open park, and as many as twenty-five fawns have been dropped in a season." It would be interesting to know when these fawns are born. Real acclimatisation takes place when the period of the birth of the young changes to the requirements of the season in the new country. In India the calves are born after the rainy season in October. In England they ought to be born in the early summer. Abroad where these deer have been tried the hinds begin by dropping their young at irregular times, but gradually assimilate to the seasonal habits of European deer.
It is noted in the excellent article from which we have quoted that none of the American deer, from North or South, wapiti, Virginian deer, mule deer, or moose, do well in England. This is curious, but not more so than the fact lately reported that farm stock bred in the States from exported animals cannot retain either bone or hair without renewals of English blood.
Previous page
